Former Utah Sen. Mitt Romney said he thinks the country’s best days are ahead of it. On the eve of the country’s 250th birthday, Romney joined Harvard University’s Kennedy School this week for a discussion about polarization in America today.
Romney attended the JFK Jr. forum Monday for an event titled “Consent of the Governed: America at 250 and Beyond,” where he discussed the state of U.S. democracy and the future of political polarization.
Moderator Jill Lepore, a Harvard professor, asked Romney if there’s someone in America’s future who could bring the country out from a divided moment in time. He said there were three things that he thought could be a motivating factor for change: a crisis, a great leader and a rising generation.
He noted that all throughout history, leaders have brought their communities from darkness to light. Romney named several former presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.
“The other example that’s happened in history is when there’s a crisis that hits a nation or a civilization so hard that it wakes the people up and they take action, and hopefully not a crisis so severe it kills them, but one that gets them to change course and come together,” he said.
Romney noted how during the Civil War, politics was so volatile that ballots were colored to know which party a person voted for — ballots were bought and voting booths were open so purchasers could ensure the person cast their ballot in the way they paid them to. Romney said he was wondering how and why it fizzled out in the early 1900s.
“The young generation sort of said ‘enough,’” he said. “So the rising generation wouldn’t buy into it.”
He argued that for the country to move to a more healed, less divisive place, one of those three things would have to happen.
Romney: ‘I have faith in America’
“We’ve got some real challenges in America. We’re not really addressing them effectively. We’re still the greatest nation, in my view, on Earth,” Romney said. “Churchill said this, he said, ‘Look, you can count on the American people to get things right when they’ve exhausted all the alternatives.’”
“And we’re going through some alternatives right now and it feels awful, but … we have extraordinary advantages and we will succeed,” he continued. “But we need, in my opinion, a great leader or leaders … in homes, in churches, in universities, in institutions all over.”
Romney explained that the decline in religious participation in the United States can be linked to the decline in understanding someone who is different from you, which has in part led the country to be so divided. Humans “learn from one another,” he said.
“I have faith in America, and I’m convinced that our best days are ahead, but we’re going to face some challenges to get there,” Romney added.