Romney Reflects on 25-Year Career in Public Service

Highlights of the interview can be found below, and full video can be found here.

His values and proudest accomplishments:

Personality is important, and character—in my view—is actually perhaps the most critical thing we choose in our leaders, whether in a state in a university, in a church, or in a White House. Policy, bad policy we can live with. The country’s overcome bad policy in the past, and it will in the future. Bad character is something we haven’t had to live with. So, it’s important in our leaders of all kinds that we have people who are honest and virtuous and direct in a way that is not based upon personal interest, but is based instead on the national interest.

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I am a creature of, you know, my dad that you just saw [in the clip] and the values that he instilled in me and my mom and her passion.I’m a person of deep and profound faith. And so those are importantly part of who I am and what I brought to the public sector. My passion has been to preserve the Union, preserve freedom, and to help people in country in doing that. You know, so, for instance, when Benjamin Franklin was reported to say, “A Republic, if you can keep it.” My purpose has been trying to make sure that we keep it and to do the things that would allow us to keep it. So, things I’m proudest of are things that have made it more likely for America to succeed, so things that made our economy work better. When I was a governor [of Massachusetts], things that made our state work better. When I was at the Olympics, it was making sure that the character of the country was able to be demonstrated to people around the world. And then there are things that actually are more attuned to helping individuals, so that our health care plan that got everybody in the state of Massachusetts ensured. I’m very proud of that. Our education policies. I mean, Massachusetts ranks number one in the nation in K-12 education. That’s in part because of policies, not just that I put in place, but my predecessors did. These are things I’m extraordinarily proud of. And in Washington, it was going after some of the challenges we face globally—how we stand up to the China, how we support freedom fighters like those in Ukraine and those in Israel—a lot of different voices and perspectives—but keeping America strong. And if you will, preserving the Republic is, in my view, the most important thing I’ve endeavored to do.

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I think you learn from life’s experience—you learn from both your successes and failures. I don’t think you just learn from one or the other, or perhaps even one more than the other. But sure, I’ve had some failures. I had some campaigns that didn’t work. But the funny thing is, I don’t define myself by promotions or pay or actually winning elections. I define myself by whether I’m in the fight, whether I’ve tried to make a difference on things that matter most…I’m proud for what I accomplished. I recognize the places I didn’t get the job done. But I’m not going to lose sleep over that because I fought as hard as I knew how to do at that time. And that’s the nature of life.

The challenges facing the United States:

We have a number of challenges as a country, but we don’t have a strategy to deal with China—a great power competitor unlike anything we’ve faced before. The Soviet Union was a competitor, but it was—we didn’t know it at the time—it was weak economically. China is strong, even potentially stronger than us down the road economically. So, it’s a different kind of threat.I keep on pushing for us to develop a national strategy to confront China and to get them to be diverted towards a course of collaboration or cooperation or competition, as opposed to, warfare eventually. And, I have a hard time getting any administration to sign on to that. That’s one of the areas I feel I needed to push harder.

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I think it was important for the country [to work on a bipartisan basis], which is that at the time, when we were able to be more successful passing legislation, we had divided government. Republicans had one chamber, Democrats the other, the White House Democrats had. So, the only way you were going to get anything done was working with people on both sides of the aisle. And, so a group of ten of us came together largely from happenstance. We shared a dinner together and began working on a little issue just for fun over dinner, and that became the basis of a COVID relief package…That’s the way I think America wants us to work, to actually come together to find common ground, and to put aside the politics, if possible. I wish we had done that on immigration. We tried. Our little group wanted to do that. We couldn’t get that across the finish line. But America’s got to work because some of the challenges we have may not necessarily be front and center in people’s minds because they’re so far distant in their impact. But you have to take action now to avoid the potential calamity down the road. And the debt that we have is one of those. China’s emergence as a great power and the great power is another one of those. AI is another one of those. I mean, climate, there are major issues that don’t have as much public attention as they deserve. So, you’d expect in a representative democracy the representatives to work on some things that may not be thought about by the public at large. And we were able to do that.

The power of freedom:

I think people fundamentally recognize the importance of what America is and the role we play here for our citizens, the power of freedom. I mean, if you think about our, if you will, our competition and hopefully not confrontation, but our competition with the authoritarians, which is this new axis of China and Russia and Iran, North Korea. And by the way, they’re winning. You know, according to Freedom House that looks at the spread of freedom it’s retreat around the world, they’re picking up more adherents than, than we are. If you think about that effort and what we have to do, I think people recognize, okay, we’ve got a responsibility. We have to win. And we can’t attack the institutions that allow us to be successful in this global competition. It’s bad for the world, and it’s bad for us. I mean, there are some who think that America doesn’t need to be involved in the world. Look, we’re the superpower. We’re the largest economy in the world. All right. We’re almost 25% of the world’s economy. And, so what we do has impact. If we want to see a strong America with prosperous Americans and inflation tamed and great education and good health care—we want all these wonderful things. We would like to have a stable world. We don’t want to have wars going on. We don’t want to have people attacking our allies. So, the people who buy products from us. So, we’re involved in the world because it’s in our interest. And that’s why when people say, “America first,” it’s like, yeah, America first means America is going to be involved in the world. That’s why we’re helping Ukraine. Because if Russia is stronger and takes Ukraine, then it’s not going to stop. And if it doesn’t stop, that’s going to hurt us. So, I think the institutions hold because I think people, when faced with the reality of what’s at stake, they’re going to want to protect the roots of freedom.

The importance of faith:

I grew up, in a setting where I recognized my faith was not common, all right, and that people were going to be, inclined to think less of me, perhaps because of my faith. I mean, I was the only member of my church in my high school, all right? So, I was different than other kids in important ways. That’s not something I would have necessarily chosen to be different, but actually, that served me well throughout my life. Which is, I’m willing to stand alone. I’m not going to lose sleep over the fact that other people are critical of me if I feel that I’ve done the right thing. It’s a great source of solace and relief, and the fact that people would attack my religion and my faith, it’s like, yeah, okay, they’re in a campaign. They’re going to do anything they can that’s going to help them get votes. I’m not going to worry about that. That’s something that, frankly, I expected and have seen throughout my political career. I think it’s unfortunate in the country because I think we really want to have people of faith who believe in something bigger than themselves. It may be faith in the country, faith in their family, faith in God. And the whole idea of faith, by the way, is if there’s a supreme being and that we are somehow the children or the family of a supreme being, and therefore that all humanity is connected. That, I think is a very helpful perspective to bring to politics and to bring to public service. So, I want people of faith, and I’m not going to be critical of their faith, if they exhibit the qualities, the best qualities of their religion, and bring that to the political table.

The importance of family:

Ann is my best counselor and advisor. So, any policy decision, any life decision I make, is shared with Ann. She has, if you will, diverted me from a course I might otherwise have taken. So, for instance, when I was at Bain Capital and was really getting into the financial success that, has now been developed there by a stronger team than I represented, I was asked to go off and run the Olympics in Utah, and I said, “absolutely not.” And she said, you’ve got to do it. And I said, “no, I don’t.” And then she began to describe why this was something I needed to do…I hadn’t lived in Utah. It was the place of my family’s heritage—my mom and dad. But I hadn’t lived there. My faith was based in Utah, but I had never run a big event. And the Olympics is a big event. I was not a great athlete, so there was not an obvious connection. I said, “well why would I do that?” And she said, “you know, the Olympics is one of the few places where people of the world get to see the great qualities of humanity. Teamwork, determination, sacrifice. These are things that are extolled in the Olympics. We can’t have the Games just removed and eliminated because of what’s happened in Utah. You got to go fix it.” And she said, “you know, that’s your background is try to fix troubled things.” So, Ann helps me make critical decisions, she keeps me from making bad ones usually, and is very honest in her occasional criticisms…I want my family to remember me as someone who stood up for the things I believed, was not embarrassed by my fundamental beliefs, who loved the country and did what I believed was right to help preserve the greatest nation on earth.