Mitt Romney makes a principled exit

A journalistic lifetime ago, I crossed paths with Mitt Romney.

I had the good fortune to be assigned to cover the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Romney was chief executive of the organizing committee that ran the Games.

He had taken over leadership in 1999 under dire circumstances. A bribery scandal involving the city’s bid had been exposed, officials had been forced out, the mayor had resigned, corporate sponsors were running scared, fundraising had dried up, a $400 million deficit loomed. Five months before the Games opened, planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, ratcheting up security concerns for what was presumed to be a prime terrorist target.

Yet the Games were a rousing success, even in the estimation of cynical journalists. They were safe, a model of organization, and produced a surplus of $100 million.

It was stellar work by Romney, who received much-deserved credit for saving the Salt Lake City Games.

Too bad he couldn’t save the Republican Party.

Romney made that official this past week when he announced his retirement from the United States Senate. He won’t run for reelection in 2024, he said. Some in his own party cheered. But this was not good news for the nation as a whole.

I disagree with Romney on many things, but not on the primacy of an elected official’s duty to defend our nation’s Constitution. On that count, Romney was unwavering.

He was the only Republican senator who voted to convict then-President Donald Trump of abuse of power in the 2020 impeachment trial. That was the one centered on Trump’s attempt to pressure Ukraine for dirt on Joe Biden, who went on to defeat Trump later that year. Romney thoroughly explained his reasoning, but it was a sentence near the end of his speech that still resonates: “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 of me.”

How many of his colleagues can say the same?

One year later, six other GOP senators joined Romney in voting to convict Trump in the second impeachment trial, which followed the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol.

Romney is clear about what’s happened since. The demagogues have won. Not permanently, Romney says, taking the swiftness of Trump’s ascent as evidence the pendulum could just as easily swing back, although it’s hard to see who might lead that return. But Romney won’t be part of the revival, even if he served as its conscience.

Romney isn’t the first Republican elected to bow out of office after making an anti-Trumpist stand. Jeff Flake, Adam Kinzinger, Fred Upton, John Katko and others went before him. But Romney might well have won reelection in 2024. The difference, Romney said, is that he shouldn’t run again. He’s 76. Another term would extend into his mid-80s. He didn’t like the math.

“Frankly, it’s time for a new generation of leaders,” Romney said in a video statement. “They’re the ones that need to make the decisions that will shape the world they will be living in.”

He punctuated that by advising Trump and Biden to step aside as well, casting his lot against gerontocracy and demagoguery.

You can call Romney a lot of things. Opportunistic for the way he quickly parlayed his stewardship of the Winter Games into a successful run for governor of Massachusetts. Privileged for his great wealth. Pompous for any number of things.

But a patriot for what he said and did when it mattered most.

“We’re all footnotes at best in the annals of history,” he said in that speech detailing his first impeachment vote. “But in the most powerful nation on earth, the nation conceived in liberty and justice, that is distinction enough for any citizen.”

 COLUMNIST MICHAEL DOBIE’S opinions are his own.

By Michael Dobie

michael.dobie@newsday.commwdobie

Michael Dobie is a member of the Newsday editorial board.