By Natalie Blumenstock
Could it be the tough guys from the Tea Party era are sensitive new age guys?
Before he grudgingly took Chris Sununu’s advice, and left the presidential race, Chris Christie cut a TV spot that was downright confessional. Christie had known Trump a long time. Christie new Trump’s flaws from Trump’s years in New York City. As a prosecutor in near by New Jersey, Christie put Jared Kushner’s father in jail. After Christie’s own 2016 presidential bid had failed, and Trump looked nomination bound, Christie climbed aboard the the Trump train. He rationalized that he could “make Trump a better president.” Christie humbly expressed regret.
Once people taste power it is hard to give it up. Jared Kushner quickly cut Christie out of heading his president-elect father in law’s transition to the presidency.
Things used to be different. Christie had once been the wildly popular Governor of Jersey. A GOP governor of a blue state, who took on the public employee unions and once chased a heckler down the Boardwalk, yelling at him as he brandished an ice cream cone. His blunt talk, and even his excess weight, were the antithesis of the blow dried and scripted politician. The public took to it for a while. Authenticity. In 2011, no less a pugilist than Ann Coulter would fret that “unless Christie runs, Romney will be nominated and Obama will be reelected.” Christie didn’t run. What Coulter predicted is exactly what happened., but by 2016 the public had tired of Christie’s bluster. There was Bridgegate. And they found a better bully. Even Ann was smitten for a while.
Christie said the last straw was Trump’s refusal to accept his 2020 election loss. Christie also could not have been happy that Trump gave him Covid, which almost killed him. In any event, his second presidential bid was less a run for office than an effort to publicly confront Trump, and perhaps to atone. A line once spoken about Nixon applies to Trump even more. “He is the darkness reaching out for the darkness, and sooner or later it’s him or you.” Christie confessed ambition, not necessarily a bad thing, and hated leaving the fight. While he doubted Haley was “up to it,” he would not do anything that might assist Trump. He also seemed to warn others, who had made similar bargains, that there would be “a reckoning.”
That is the title of an arresting biography of Mitt Romney. The author, McKay Coppins, had access to Romney’s journals. Mitt’s never finished college, but was a successful auto industry executive who went on to become Governor of Michigan. He was a bluff, decent, sentimental, not very cautious man. He evokes memories of Joe Biden in younger days. George Romney fought the far right in the GOP. He marched for civil rights, and poked his own Mormon Church about the issue. JFK most feared him as a 1964 reelection rival. In early 1967 polls had him unseating LBJ in 1968 by a comfortable margin. But he candidly admitted what was common knowledge in 1960s political circles, that military brass spun politicians about the realities of the Vietnam quagmire. Romney said he was “brainwashed.” Everybody knew what he meant, but pretending not to know such things keeps much of the political and pundit class employed. “A light rinse would have sufficed,” Gene McCarthy snarkily responded. Romney was finished. Nixon moved into place. And we all lived happily ever after.
The Mitt Romney most of us know, from his own career, is a much more cautious man than his father. Buttoned up. Competent. A little mean. A little smug. He made his money “turning around” companies, often destroying lives. He was a windsock politically. When he sought to unseat Senator Ted Kennedy in 1994 Mitt was pro choice, and touted his 1992 support of Paul Tsongas. He was familiar to Granite State folk as Governor of Massachusetts and had a NH vacation home. In that job he passed a health care program that was the model for Obamacare. Mitt even campaigned on this accomplishment when he ran for president in 2008. By 2012 he was denouncing Obama for implementing his program. His support for Tsongas? He was just “making trouble” in the other party. He was anti-choice now. He was “severely conservative.” He courted Donald Trump as Trump spread racist lies about Obama’s place of birth. He tried to head off Trump in 2016, but squandered that credibility with a comical lunge at being Trump’s secretary of state.
The Romney’s are LDS royalty in Utah, and Mitt was a hero there for rescuing the winter Olympics in Utah in the early 2000s. He was honestly more conservative than his father. Mitt saw himself as a party elder who could serve constructively in the senate. He had no idea how much his party and country had changed. He would vote to remove Trump from office twice, after both impeachments. His vote also secured a far right Supreme Court majority after RBG died. For the opposition to Trump his family still gets death threats. He is harassed at airports. He spends five grand a day on security. Less wealthy colleagues tell him in private that they stick with Trump, not out of careerism, but fear for their family’s safety! Life long friends revile him. His niece, national chair of the MAGA party, denounced him.
The book shares journal entries that show a deeply conflicted, often deeply hurt Romney. Self doubt was never something one associated with Romney. His observations over decades about the people he courted and associated with suggest he often felt the need to take a shower after, and this was long before the MAGA era. It was always possible to feel respect for Romney. This book allows you to feel sympathy and even affection. It also allows you to feel his regrets. What has happened to our politics generally, and to the GOP and conservative movement specifically, did not start with Trump. Trump is just it’s ugliest expression, so far. It is an old story in history. It is our story now. Mitt Romney and Chris Christie had their reckoning. There will be others.