Mitt Romney on the purpose of life: The exit interview

One Sunday in late 2007, Mitt Romney showed up to a Sunday morning meeting at the Latter-day Saint chapel in Nashua, New Hampshire. He came in a few minutes late and sat on his own toward the back, a slight smile on his face, his eyes focused straight ahead. The members of the congregation snuck furtive glances at him, but otherwise tried not to make a big deal out of it. That’s the way in New England, if you want to be left alone, you’re left alone. He quietly snuck out of the meeting before it ended, shaking a few hands in the foyer on his way out.

Romney, sitting there alone in that chapel, without even his wife Ann or another member of his large family to buffer him, showed all of himself at once: he was the nice Midwesterner, the buttoned-up Bostonian, the man with roots deep enough in Utah that years later he was able to win one of the state’s seats in the U.S. Senate after only a few years of residence. A man of faith.

When many candidates go to church in the midst of a campaign, it’s often to rally supporters. But Romney was there for something else. A moment of rest in the midst of a relentlessly busy campaign season. A moment to pay homage to his God. A moment to commune with the divine.

Romney had served as a bishop and stake president for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, volunteer positions of responsibility — callings in his faith. He is someone who took his faith seriously throughout his long career in public service, including on that Sunday, even though he was neck-deep in a presidential campaign where questions about his religion were constant.

Around this same time he gave a landmark speech addressing his religion; would it be a liability in an election? He pointed out that there is no religious test for higher office in the U.S. Constitution. He said he would stay true to his faith, even though it appeared to be making his political life more difficult.

His first run for president ended just a few months later after he lost in key early primary states. In 2012, he would try again and this time win the Republican nomination.

In both races, a win in New Hampshire eluded him, despite his ties to the state. He had a house on Lake Winnipesaukee, a picturesque spot north of Concord, where his large family gathers every summer. Several of the cities and towns on New Hampshire’s southern border also function as bedroom communities for people with jobs in Massachusetts, where Romney served as governor from 2002-2006.

Back when newspaper endorsements carried a lot more weight than they do now, Romney failed to capture the nod from the New Hampshire Union Leader, the statewide paper with a conservative editorial page. In 2008, the paper endorsed the late Sen. John McCain, and in 2012, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich got their nod. I was a correspondent for the paper, with no editorial input, and I covered a few of Romney’s rallies. I’m also a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and I was there in Nashua when Romney came to visit, watching him navigate church and state.

Earlier this month, years and years later, I sat across from Romney in his Salt Lake City office to talk to him about the twists and turns of his political career and how he got through it. Faith doesn’t just sustain him, it is a part of him. He also marveled at the direction his life took, from running the Olympics to his two presidential runs, and serving the people of two very different states — one blue, one red — across the country from each other.

“My life has not followed any logical course. I could never have predicted the course it would take,” he said, with a sense of wonderment.

His office was almost packed up when we spoke, but behind him, leaning against the wall, were two pictures of his dad, George Romney, who was governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969, and ran for president in 1968. The man who defeated him, Richard Nixon, made Romney the secretary of Housing and Urban Development during his first administration.

It was easy to tell Mitt Romney was near the end of his political career during our interview. He was nostalgic, speaking about his father and his early runs with candor. He was also grayer, thinner and more serene than he had been all those years ago. The father of five sons and 25 grandchildren, he and his wife Ann welcomed their first great-grandchild in 2021.

He also spoke easily and openly about his faith and religion, and how it sustained him throughout his life.

The presidential election in 2008 featured big-name contests for Republicans and Democrats. After eight years of President George W. Bush, the primaries were wide open. It was the year of Hilary Clinton vs. Barack Obama, of Romney vs. McCain. New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani — still a national hero after the terror attacks on 9/11 — led the polls early on the Republican side, while Joe Biden couldn’t catch fire as a candidate, but later was chosen to run on the Democratic ticket by Obama.

In New Hampshire, voters expect candidates to show up and shake their hands at diners and Lincoln Day dinners. Romney traveled tirelessly around New Hampshire ahead of the 2008 and 2012 primaries. After his races, Romney was criticized for not connecting with voters, but on the ground in New Hampshire, that wasn’t what I saw. He was likable, affable. He told funny stories.

Yes, he was richer than the rest of us, but he ran an energetic campaign and shook as many hands as were offered to him. But Romney lost New Hampshire and the nomination that year to McCain. A few years later, he lost New Hampshire again, this time to Newt Gingrich, even as he won the Republican nomination. He just couldn’t seem to win over enough of the libertarian-leaning Republicans in the Granite state.

Romney ran on his record of turning things around, of being able to speak to both Republicans and Democrats. He’d run against Sen. Ted Kennedy in 1994, where he’d made a name for himself in Massachusetts politics. After the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics became mired in controversy because of a bribery scandal, he came in and turned things around, running a Games right after the devastating 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. He didn’t speak about it much, but early in life he survived a terrible car accident while on his Latter-day Saint mission in France, a crash that claimed his mission president’s wife. Through it all, Romney stayed optimistic. In our interview he insisted that when you focus on things that matter — like your faith and family — life’s setbacks fade into the background.

That includes his setback in 2012, when he lost the presidency to Obama. The reasons people gave — he was too elitist, too moderate, he flip-flopped — included his faith. Even if it was the reason, Romney said, he wouldn’t do anything differently.

Romney on his faith

At a rally on Jan. 4, 2008, an article in the New Hampshire Union Leader by Dan Tuohy described Romney sneezing and the crowd yelling “God bless you.”

Tuohy wrote, “God also came up later in his rally last night, when the Mormon presidential hopeful was asked to explain faith and its role in politics.” Romney answered, according to Tuohy, “‘We as a nation are founded as a nation of religious liberty and tolerance. We don’t judge based on religion.”

A few weeks earlier, in December 2007, Romney gave his landmark speech, “Faith in America,” where he spoke about religious freedom and explained how his faith would inform his presidency. He evoked President John F. Kennedy, the nation’s first Catholic president, who also faced religious bigotry. And he explained why he would be true to his faith even if it would stand in his way of winning.

There are some, he said in his remarks at the George Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas, who “would prefer it if I would simply distance myself from my religion, say that it is more a tradition than my personal conviction, or disavow one or another of its precepts. That I will not do. I believe in my Mormon faith and I endeavor to live by it. My faith is the faith of my fathers — I will be true to them and to my beliefs.

“Some believe that such a confession of my faith will sink my candidacy. If they are right, so be it. But I think they underestimate the American people. Americans do not respect believers of convenience.”

Now, 17 years later, Romney still lives by those words.

“If you define yourself by winning and losing elections, you’re going to have a sad life. And if you define yourself by your promotions at work, you’re going to be disappointed, most likely. But if you define yourself by your relationship with God and your faith and your family and friends, those are entirely in your control,” he said during our interview.

His boss, Bill Bain at consulting firm Bain and Company, told him there are only two important decisions to make — who to marry and what career to pursue.

“He was wrong,” Romney said. “Those are two of the three most important decisions you make in life. The other decision is what you’re going to devote your life to. What’s the purpose of your life?”

“The purpose of my life is to make Ann happy and to raise a great family, to help build The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the gospel of Jesus Christ, and to preserve the union and freedom.”

Different purposes took greater prominence depending on what he was doing at the time, he said, like when he was a bishop versus a senator.

“But those are the purposes of life. And if you go through life without a purpose, or if your purpose is public acclaim or fame or money or promotion or winning elections, you’re bound to be unhappy.”

Romney: The ‘free world’ came together during 2002 Winter Olympics

After returning from his mission to France, then marrying Ann, Romney went on to earn his undergraduate degree at Brigham Young University. He continued his education at Harvard University, where he earned both a JD and an MBA. After graduating, he became a management consultant, eventually landing at Bain Capital, where he made his fortune.

In 1994, Romney left Bain to run for Senate against Kennedy. After losing the race, he returned to consulting.

Then, in 1999, in the midst of a bribery scandal that was plaguing the upcoming Salt Lake Winter Games, Romney agreed to become president and CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. He went on to run the widely acclaimed 2002 Winter Games, which propelled him to his run for governor of Massachusetts.

In our interview, Romney repeated an assertion he has made before — that running the Winter Games was the favorite of all his public-facing experiences.

The staff of the organizing committee was all pulling together, he explained, aware their work had an expiration date.

“All we cared about was the success of the Games, not who got credit for it, or who was going to get promoted. … And so everybody worked together to create a joint success,” he said.

Salt Lake’s Winter Games came just months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, adding the need for greater security, but also the need to give people hope.

“Getting involved with the Olympics was for me, about showing the great qualities of humanity to the world, which is what the Olympics does, he said. “But then, with 9-11 occurring, our Olympics would also bring the world together in unity, to oppose extremism and violence and to rally around America. And so it took on an additional purpose and elevated for our team, but also for the athletes and the people of Utah, a significance that was even greater.”

He recalled the French team coming out during the opening ceremonies holding French and American flags.

“You don’t see that a lot from the French or anyone else, right? The free world came together in a way that I think the world had not seen, perhaps ever before. And it was very emotional, very powerful,” he said.

A few weeks before the Olympics were held, Romney said the head of the Massachusetts Republican Party came to visit him in Salt Lake City, where she asked him to run for governor. The Bay State had a Republican governor at the time, Jane Swift, who had planned to run for reelection, according to Romney. But her approval ratings were low, and Romney was coming off the high of running a successful Olympics.

“We began to give it some thought, and I don’t recall when we made the decision, but ultimately, at some point, we said, OK, let’s go back when the Games are over,” Romney said.

Then, “immediately after the Paralympic Games, we headed back to Boston and announced on my doorstep, actually my front yard, that I was going to run,” he said.

Romney: Being a governor is better than being a senator

When asked what he liked better, being a governor or a senator, Romney didn’t hesitate: governor, definitely.

“There’s no question about that. You can get so much more done and have so much more impact to help people than as a senator,” he said. “As a governor, you’re a leader. As a senator, you’re part of a large team, with intramural competition between the two parties, and not much gets done, particularly at the federal level.”

He pointed to the attempts to get an updated immigration policy. “It’s only taken 30 years, and we still haven’t done it. It’s shameful.”

Romney said he “enjoyed” his experience in the Senate, but “it’s not as productive and satisfying as being a governor. And being a governor wasn’t as satisfying or productive as being head of the Olympics.”

He liked representing Utah in the Senate, in part because he was able to shine a light on the state’s values.

“I believe that Utah’s values are powerful and needed by the country,” he said. “When I say Utah’s values, I mean the belief in hard work, education, getting married and having families, having children.

“Society at large is questioning whether marriage and children are an important part of life. I mean, my faith has been teaching for a long time that the most important job you have is as a parent, and those things, I think, are essential to the preservation of a society.”

The politics of same-sex marriage

In November 2003, when Romney was governor of Massachusetts, the state’s Supreme Judicial Court said same-sex couples had a right to marry. It was the first state in the U.S. to legalize same-sex marriage, and it created a dilemma for Romney, who expressed his opposition to same-sex marriage while supporting civil unions.

His position was that for “3,000 years of recorded human history” marriage had been recognized as a union between a man and a woman, and he thought the term marriage should remain reserved for those relationships. After the state Supreme Court released its decision, Romney asked the state Legislature to amend the Massachusetts Constitution to ban same-sex marriage, but ultimately the court’s decision stood.

Years later, in 2022, after the U.S. Supreme Court extended recognition of same-sex marriages nationwide through the 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, Romney supported the Respect for Marriage Act. The legislation codified the recognition of same-sex marriages at the federal level and also included religious liberty protections, put in place through an amendment sponsored by a bipartisan group of lawmakers.

“The Supreme Court had said that same-sex marriage is required by the Constitution, and that being said, if we’re going to have same-sex marriage, I wanted to make sure we had protections for religious liberty. That was something that was important to me in the legislation that was passed,” he said.

Sens. Thom Tillis and Kyrsten Sinema asked for his support on the bill, and he said he told them, “‘I can only be supportive if it includes religious liberty protections.’ And with help from outside counsel and my own team, we drafted paragraphs that we felt needed to be included, and I said, ‘if these are included, I can vote for it, and if not, I can’t.’”

Ultimately, those paragraphs putting in place religious liberty protections were added to the bill and Romney voted for it.

The compromise legislation was also supported by a number of religious organizations, including The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Is the Romney-Trump feud at an end?

President-elect Donald Trump has been a part of Romney’s story for years now. Trump endorsed Romney in his 2012 campaign, and Romney told McKay Coppins, who wrote a biography about Romney, he spoke to Trump occasionally in the years following. But Romney did not think Trump should be president, arguing he did not have the character a president should have. Romney voted to impeach Trump twice and spoke out against him regularly.

But, ultimately, Romney did not succeed, and he now sounds somewhat resigned about the matter.

At a press conference in Utah last week, Romney signaled the battle for the soul of the Republican Party is over — it’s Trump’s party now.

“The Republican Party really is shaped by Donald Trump now and you’ll find the House and the Senate members, the Republican Party, pretty much following what he puts out there,” he said.

A couple of months ago, while speaking at the University of Utah, Romney reiterated he wouldn’t vote for Trump, but said he also didn’t want to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris because he wanted to play a role in the future of the GOP.

But in our interview, he sounded ready to kiss his political life goodbye. “People who lose elections should shut up and get off the stage,” he said.

It’s a far cry from where Romney was during the heat of the 2016 Republican primaries.

When it became clear Trump could win the Republican nomination, Romney decided he had to step up and say something. He gave a scathing speech about Trump, again at the University of Utah, calling him a “phony, a fraud.” He encouraged GOP voters — almost pleading with them — to choose someone, anyone but Trump.

Trump responded by launching a series of attacks on Romney, and the two have sparred publicly ever since, including after Romney voted to impeach him. In February 2020, Romney was the only Republican to vote to impeach Trump. It was also the first time in U.S. history a member of the president’s party voted in favor of impeachment. Romney voted to impeach Trump again after the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the Capitol, along with six other Republican senators.

Ahead of the 2024 election, Romney spoke up again, asking Republican candidates to coalesce around a single opponent to Trump. It was all to no avail.

Now, after Trump’s second White House win, Romney sounds ready to leave the battle behind.

“I have to tell you, I agree with President Trump on most policy issues. There are probably a few that I don’t, but overwhelmingly, we’re on the same page,” he said at the press conference, pointing to Trump’s position on immigration and his stated desire to cut federal spending.

“I’m a conservative, and he put in place, by and large, conservative policies on public lands, on spending and a number of things. So I agree with a lot of what President Trump will do,” he said.

Romney said the areas he had “difficulty” with Trump were issues like his alleged sexual assault, which Trump was found liable for, and his “relaxed relationship with the truth.”

Romney on what he’s doing next and why he’s still optimistic

Given that his arch nemesis — my words, not his — is back in the White House, you would think Romney would be somber about the future of his country. But during our interview, he was hopeful, cheerful even.

Maybe that’s because he’s contemplating his life post-politics, and it doesn’t look so bad. He said he plans to remain a Utah resident, but he and Ann also have houses in Florida and New Hampshire. He has grandchildren to catch up with, speeches to give. He said he may engage with college students and community leaders on issues related to promoting “the preservation of the Union and the cause of freedom.”

But his response when I asked what comes next for him was an emphatic “nothing.” He said he doesn’t plan to be a “political person” moving forward.

He does still clearly care about what happens to the country he’s served for more than two decades. And he believes, eventually, the nation will right itself.

He’s been known to quote the poem “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats, particularly the lines that read, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”

Biden also quoted the poem during his last speech at the United Nations, but he quoted a different line: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world … .” This is not the state of the world, Biden said, he believes that “in our time, the center has held.”

I asked Romney if he agrees with Biden’s assessment.

“I think we will comport with what Winston Churchill said, which is, you can trust the Americans to get things right after they’ve exhausted all the alternatives,” he replied. “We will make terrible mistakes, but I think the heart of the American people is good. And I believe that there are individual leaders who stand up and call on our better angels, and we are attracted to that, in the end. I think early on, we’re attracted to the shiny and the screaming and the anger and the resentment. But ultimately, the better part wins out.”

He then quoted a line from the Christmas carol “I Heard the Bells On Christmas Day.”

“I believe right prevails.”