The year is 2002, and the world is fixated on Utah. LDS missionaries star in a Saturday Night Live skit and fry sauce adorns collectible Olympics pins. By and large, the credit for a gleaming Olympic games goes to Mitt Romney, the quaffed future candidate for president.
And he deserves it. Mitt arrives the moment Utah’s Olympic reputation nosedives. The previous CEO and other leaders have marred the games’ reputation with bribery and inefficiency. Where the previous CEO dug a $379 million hole in organizing committee coffers, Mitt wrangles an approximate $50 million surplus. While board meetings were once catered, Romney charges board members a dollar per slice of pizza. When a faulty traffic controller holds up buses for a ski event, the future governor (allegedly) fires off the “f-word” and clears the way for visitors. He sums up his and the state’s gargantuan effort at the end of the games:
“Well, Olympians and people of Salt Lake City, we did it!”
Where did this Mitt go?
He has since called Trump “a phony and a fraud,” then sought appointment to lead the same fraud’s State Department. He has labeled images of family separation “heartbreaking” but advanced no agenda to stop it. He has attacked the “socialist” policies of Democrats who target the issues he only claims to focus on.
The current tragedy of Mitt’s leadership is not that he has done nothing positive as senator, but that he has done too little about what matters most.
For example, the senator has professed belief that humans contribute to climate change, but also called the Green New Deal “silliness” because Brazil and China spew noxious fumes without any such regulation. But his accusations aside, Romney has not officially proposed any legislation to combat climate change.
This instance reflects a recent pattern where Romney is willing to speak softly, but carry no stick. Yes, “The world needs American leadership,” he writes in an impactful Washington Post op-ed, and yes, “climate realities” will cause more wildfires in the West, he admits to the Sutherland Institute in Salt Lake City. But his public inaction on the issue only weakens American leadership in tackling climate change.
Of course, Romney might be participating in background meetings and negotiations that will never see the front page. He might be the warrior behind the curtains, reinforcing his public words with private action and secretly convincing Mitch McConnell that the Green Ravine fire in Tooele, the Gun Range fire in Bountiful and the Snoqualmie fire in Layton happened in part because Utah is the fifth fastest warming state in the country.
But what he might do and what he once did belong on different planets.
I remember a Mitt Romney whose bold and passionate leadership saved the Olympics and introduced Romneycare for Massachusetts. Now, I am represented by a Sen. Romney who speaks suavely about climate change and family separations but has done nothing to stop them.
It was a seminal Republican who called his post the “Bully Pulpit” and used it as a powerful position for good. Right now, Mitt has a similar opportunity: to bear an ensign for Utah and a banner for the sickly Republican party. But so far, he has only joined them in passively saving face with the public while Utah suffers from a leadership vacuum on Capitol Hill.
Utah and the country need the old Mitt Romney back.
Peter Johnston
Peter Johnston is a junior at the University of Utah studying political science and international studies. He volunteered briefly on the 2018 Romney for Senate campaign, and still believes the senator can be a leader for Utah and the nation.