Midweek Update: Mitt Romney Mistook the Mask for the Identity

Last week, McKay Coppins published an excerpt of his upcoming book Romney: A Reckoning in The Atlantic. In the article, Mitt Romney talks about his time in the Senate and his growing disillusionment with the Republican Party in the age of Donald Trump. While part of the excerpt is Romney protecting his image as a true believer in the Constitution against the cynical forces from within his own party, we shouldn’t forget that Romney’s 2012 campaign for President had more than a few nods at deep cruelty. We also shouldn’t overlook that for all of Romney’s disdain towards Trump, he also was willing to kiss his ring after the 2016 election in an attempt to become Secretary of State.

In this framing, it’s easy to dismiss Romney as another cynical political operator eager to erase his own past to create a new narrative. But I’ve seen the 2014 documentary Mitt a couple times, and I don’t think that captures the whole picture. If anything, I would say the story of Romney isn’t one of aggressive cynicism, but incredible naiveté. For Mitt Romney and his ilk, they never understood what their own voters wanted from them, and now they’re appalled that what the Republican base wants, more than anything, is cruelty and authoritarianism.

This is because Romney believed the mask. Romney is a Reagan Republican, and what that means is that you can be relentlessly cruel towards the impoverished and minorities, but you have to do it with a smile. You ignore all your own privileges and advantages, and buy into the narrative that business is what makes the country strong. Anyone who would attempt to regulate business is anti-American, and anyone who wants the government to help out isn’t giving Americans the tough love they need to thrive. If you grew up wealthy and privileged like Mitt Romney, then unless you endeavor to puncture your own bubble and get a dose of complex realities, then you absorb these simple narratives and weave them into a political belief system.

Because Romney built his political identity on weak foundations, he now finds himself shocked that the Republican Party he thought he knew has abandoned him so quickly. That’s because Trump gave Republican voters what they really wanted, which was the cruelty. It wasn’t religion or trickle-down economics. It was cruelty. They wanted license to hurt people who weren’t like them, and do so in a way without any complicated policy trappings.

What Romney represented was a more genteel cruelty. He had no problem telling donors that 47% of Americans think they’re entitled to government handouts, but he recoils at a violent demagogue like Trump because Trump is quick to encourage violence and direct it any group he finds insufficiently deferential towards his own venal ends. Romney is shocked at this turn of events because he never saw himself or his party as villainous.

I don’t think Mitt Romney is an evil man per se, but I do think he is a tragic fool, which is why I find his story compelling. He lived his entire life thinking things were one way, and now that he’s almost at the end, he realizes it was something else. Materially, Romney won’t suffer as he’s wealthy enough to live out his remaining days in comfort and with the love of his friends and family. But he also knows that the kind of grotesque personal wealth he thought could guide all of America to prosperity will be spent on personal security from the voters he once sought to represent.

What I’m Watching

I recently saw a couple of good documentaries. The first is The Trials of Henry Kissinger, which is available on YouTube. Henry Kissinger is 100 years old, and when he finally kicks the bucket, I know that every major newspaper will either give him a laudatory headline for his obituary or, at worst, refer to him as “controversial” instead of “should have rotted in The Hague until her perished.” I will say it’s interesting that some of Kissinger’s defenders in this documentary refer to him as a “genius,” and I guess in terms of being a revered statesman and celebrity despite making the world a worse place, that’s pretty genius. But if you add five years onto the Vietnam War only to get the same terms you could have gotten in 1968, then that’s pretty dumb!

I also watched Django & Django on Netflix, which is about the second-greatest director of Spaghetti Westerns, Sergio Corbucci. If you’re like me and love documentaries about movies and filmmakers, especially movies and filmmakers who are off the beaten path like Corbucci, this is great. Fair warning: the main interview subject here is Quentin Tarantino, who knows his Corbucci cold. I think Tarantino is a thoughtful and energetic film historian and critic, but I know some folks fine Tarantino off-putting, so your mileage may vary.

What I’m Reading

I’m still on Station Eleven, and while I’m liking it, I’m worried it may engage in one of my least favorite tropes, but I’ll hold off on passing judgment until I’ve finished the book.

In other reads:

Lies, Damned Lies, and Social-Media Metrics by John Herrman [Intelligencer] - I’ve reached the point where I feel like the metrics we’re getting are mostly useless. It is, like much of the Internet, the illusion of information. To really understand the numbers, you have to have more variables and larger context. As this article points out, we’re also doing a lot of apples-to-oranges comparisons here where a view on Netflix means less than a view on cable. Even given the scant information we have, Netflix itself bares this out because their biggest hit is Suits, a USA drama that went off the air four years ago. I don’t want to venerate broadcast and cable, but we’re going to miss them when they’re gone and all that’s left is a bunch of algorithmic gruel that we’re told is a hit.

Dancing in the Twilight: the allure of Debussy’s ‘Clair de Lune’ in the movies by Fran Hoepfner [Letterboxd] - I like articles like this that explore a frequent needle drop in movies, and Clair de Lune certainly gets quite a bit of attention in films across the decades. I like how Hoepfner breaks down both the origins of the tune itself as well as how its applied to different movies.

'The Prince of Egypt' Directors Look Back on Their Animated Landmark 25 Years Later by Adam J. Yeend [A Frame] - Not only do I think Prince of Egypt holds up remarkably well, but it also provides an interesting “What If?” for DreamWorks Animation. This article explains how the film was consciously made as something distinct and different from Disney Animation. While the transition to 3D animation was inevitable, Prince of Egypt still had a more serious and thoughtful tone, but with the success of Shrek, Katzenberg decided all of the studio’s animated movies should be like Shrek, and hence that’s what the studio became.

What I’m Hearing

Surprise! The National dropped their 10th album on Monday less than five months after their ninth album, First Two Pages of Frankenstein. It’s more of what I want from The National: extremely melancholy indie rock.

What I’m Playing

I beat Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and it’s good! I would have been ticked off paying full price for a game that’s significantly shorter than 2018’s Spider-Man, but as a game you get with a PlayStation Plus Extra subscription, it’s worth it! More than anything, the game is a great way of showcasing how much faster the PS5 can process an open-world game like Spider-Man where you don’t even need loading screens if you’re fast-traveling.

Since we’re now less than a month from Spider-Man 2, I’m trying not to start any game that I think I might not finish before October 20th, which means digging into some indie games. I played through Unpacking and quite enjoyed it, and now I’m moving on to Firewatch.