When Mitt Romney delivered his brutal take-down of Donald Trump nine months ago it was clear that this was more than your garden-variety expression of intra-party differences, which are rare enough among Republicans. It was visceral. It was – as in Caddyshack – Ted Knight furiously upbraiding the boorish Rodney Dangerfield for flouting, subverting, and debasing country club norms of decency.
So why, now that the boor runs the club, would Romney consider taking a job working for him?
Chalk it up to the same public-duty sensibility that led Romney to make the speech back in March—and that led him to spend years seeking the Presidency rather than making, and spending, more hundreds of millions of dollars.
It’s these disparate sensibilities that appear to make Romney and Trump—superficially similar post-war, ultra-successful sons of self-made multi-millionaires—polar opposites. Romney is notoriously frugal; Trump is ostentatious. Romney is devout; Trump is profane. Romney is a devoted family man; Trump is a playboy.
Unlike Trump, Romney is also, perfectly comfortable out of the headlines and away from the limelight. Romney has, for the most part, demonstrated this in his retreat from public life since losing the 2012 election.
One of the many challenges about losing a presidential contest is the delicate issue of how to serve the public without feeling debased. Almost any job seems beneath a former major-party nominee—let alone subjecting oneself to the process of being hired, and perhaps rejected. Those with public day jobs go back to them with some degree of disappointment and humility: John McCain and John Kerry to the grind of the U.S. Senate; Michael Dukakis to the remainder of his term as Massachusetts Governor. Others, including Bob Dole, Walter Mondale, and Al Gore, have struggled to make their mark through self-created academic, political, or advocacy institutes.
Mitt Romney, in the four years since joining this elite losers’ fraternity, has not found a path for himself. He has certainly stepped into a party elder role, as those others have: he keeps close tabs on Republican political affairs from his New Hampshire home, dispensing advice when he sees fit, and periodically steps into the public eye when he feels it necessary. But beyond that, Romney seems more content playing with grandchildren than playing any formal public role.
There may be, in fact, only one possibly scenario that could convince him to take a position reporting to someone else: Secretary of State for a President who desperately needs his intelligence, dignity, and statesmanship. That’s the exact one that lured him to a Manhattan dinner last weekend. Secretary of State is the only public office with stature befitting a near-President—a status reinforced by its last two occupants, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. And Trump, from Romney’s perspective, desperately needs him.
It’s not clear that Trump agrees with that assessment: he reportedly expanded his search to new candidates since the dinner date with Romney.
But it’s also possible that Romney was the one who poured cold water on the idea. Most Republicans hoping to work for or in cooperation with Trump have come away from personal confabs convinced that the private man will be a more reasonable and less dangerous than Trump's public behavior suggests. They may be right—or they may be succumbing to the wiles of a narcissist. Romney, with his finely tuned sense of propriety, may be more resistant. (The instantly viral photo of their dinner, with Romney’s sheepish look interpreted as a cry for help, struck me as his discomfort with the reality-show display Trump was making of their conversation.)
Romney may yet submit himself to the new boorish order, in hopes of rehabilitating it. I would advise him to watch – or rewatch – Caddyshack. You can fight Dangerfield or join him, but you aren’t going to change him.
