Why Mitt Romn­­ey Wrote Down As Much As He Did

The fact that Sen. Mitt Romney, instead of publishing his own memoir next month, worked with the Atlantic’s McKay Coppins on a biography—Romney: A Reckoning—tells us two things. We found out last week, when Coppins published an excerpt of the biography on the Atlantic’s website, that in 2021 Romney and Coppins began meeting in Romney’s Senate offices or in his tony Washington town house, and had long conversations during which, Romney told Coppins, “no subject would be off-limits.” Romney also gave Coppins access to a space even more intimate, and perhaps even more Mormon: Romney’s personal journals and other papers from his time as a senator. Journaling has been an integral part of the Romney family’s Mormon faith ever since Mitt’s great-great-grandfather Miles Romney became the family’s first Mormon convert after he heard missionaries preach in his native England in 1837. As Matthew Bowman, the Hunter chair of Mormon studies at Claremont Graduate University, told me, “Mormon journaling is a reflection of the impulse to record keeping present in the church from the beginning, the sense that cataloging and marking events and times is key for the reordering of life and society the church hoped to accomplish.” Still, the focus has moved toward the interior in the generations of Latter-day Saints during which Romney came of age. His vote, he said, was made based on faithfulness to the Constitution and on his “promise before God.” And echoing the same sentiments found in his great-great-grandfather Miles Romney’s journals, about the legacy of faithfulness in the face of persecution, he added: “With my vote, I will tell my children and their children that I did my duty to the best of my ability, believing that my country expected it from me.” And now we’re about to get a biography that tells more of these kinds of stories.