I am on page 206 of McKay Coppins’ Romney A Reckoning. That’s 62% of the way through. I hope to finish the book this week.1
Two years ago I was listening to Kara Swisher's Burn Book A Tech Love Story on Audible. I got 58% of the way through that one before I quit it.
Both books are from around the same time. Romney was published Oct 2023, and Burn Book was published four months later in Feb 2024.
The title of Kara’s book is a nod to the burn book in Tina Fey’s Mean Girls. In the movie, the burn book is a scrapbook in which a group of popular girls in high school write mean things about the less popular girls.
Kara’s Burn Book is kind of the same. It’s about how horrible everyone in Silicon Valley is. Except, Kara’s book, instead of being hidden on a bookshelf in her bedroom, was published by Simon & Schuster. So, it’s a little different.
Parts of McKay’s book feel very similar. There’s a lot of quotes and anecdotes in it that come from a journal Mitt kept on his iPad. Mitt is regularly making negative comments about the people in his orbit: John McCain, Jon Huntsman, Jr., Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Mike Huckabee, Roger Ailes.
No one gets as much negative comments, though, as does Donald Trump. One of the book’s main through lines is Mitt Romney’s incredibly low opinion of Donald Trump. A low opinion which, we’re told, started all the way back in January 1995—well before he become a politician. Mitt hated Donald Trump before it was cool to hate Donald Trump. If hating Donald Trump is cool, consider him Miles Davis.
There’s a point in the story where, during a campaign, Mitt’s journal, that he kept ‘in the cloud,’ is hacked. The hacker demands a ransom or else he’s going to release the contents of Mitt’s “burn book” to the media. It’s acknowledged that this would cause problems for his campaign as there’s so many negative comments in it about people in his political sphere. This problem is quickly resolved, and the stolen content is secured. But a lot of what they were scared of having released was published in a book ten years later anyway. This feels like Mitt saying, “I don’t care that they all know what I think of them now. I’m out. I was out then, too—don’t forget. But, I’m especially out now.”
Both Kara and Mitt’s books try to walk this line. They attempt to establish themselves as insiders and distance themselves from every other insider. Kara with Silicon Valley, and Mitt with Washington D.C. They’re both trying really hard to say, “Yeah, I went to Hooters, but it was just because I like the wings.” Or, “Don’t mistake my proximity to the dumpster fire with complicity.”
In that way, both books contain something of Thersites from Shakespeare’s Troillus and Cressida. Thersites lives among the Greek heroes, but despises all of them. Really hates them. But, he’s around them all the time. He’s an insider and an outsider. I feel like Kara and Mitt are both trying to position themselves into that same spot.
The reasons that I am going to finish Romney and won’t finish Burn Book are:
McKay has a lot more going on in this book than just “Mitt is trying to distance himself from Washington politics.” I’ve especially enjoyed seeing how McKay writes social media as a piece of history. There’s some really interesting anecdotes and stories surrounding Facebook messages, tweets, e-mails, and memes. Social media, and electronic media is a part of the story in a very modern way. It feels fresh and different.
Mitt is also not portrayed two-dimensional. He’s not only bitter and frustrated. A lot of times, in Burn Book, I feel like Kara comes across as only bitter and frustrated. Mitt seems to be as hard on himself as everyone else. He seems to be somewhat aloof and unaware. There’s also his flip-flopping which is acknowledged head on, and creates a picture of Romney as complicated and ambivalent. Mitt seems to have a lot of regret about who he’s been for the sake of political success.
I wonder how much of the difference between Romney and Burn Book is because one is a biography and one is an auto-biography. I assume it’s much easier for an author to present a full picture of a subject than it is for the subject to present a full picture of themselves. If McKay were to write a book about Kara Swisher we might get a little silver linings and rounded out edges than what she gave us.
As I’ve continued to read the book, I’ve rewritten this post, and referenced some parts of it that happen after pg. 206.
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