Welcome to the Bull Work Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes just a few minutes ago. We learned

that this book will be debuting on the New York Times bestseller list

so we're very fortunate to have the author McKay Coppin, staff writer for The Atlantic,

back on the Bullwork Podcast. First of all, congratulations.

Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's not always that a book about somebody who lost a presidential

election and is retiring from the United States Senate makes the bestseller list.

I mean I think one of the interesting things was that Mitt Romney had all of these

notes and journals and records and he decided that he wasn't going to write his own memoir because he

figured who wants to read a memoir of a loser and yet he turned this over to you

and it's a very very compelling read at a rather extraordinary moment in political history.

Yeah, that's why I thought he would make for a compelling subject.

I didn't start out knowing that this book would be a bestseller, you know, I just found him personally really interesting.

His kind of journey from presidential nominee and standard bearer of the Republican Party to essentially a pariah in his own party within

10 years felt to me like a pretty interesting story, but I didn't know if anyone else would find it interesting.

In fact, Mitt would always tell me, you know, like I don't know who's going to read this, like you can count on my family to buy some copies and your family to buy some copies and that might be it So I think I've been really gratified to see the attention it's gotten. Yeah, I mean he has a keen sense of history which is interesting and it comes through in your book and part of that

keen understanding is how quickly famous people are forgotten how you can be this

dominating figure and you become obscure very very quickly and a few decades later people go who

you know I was going to ask you the question how is he going to be remembered by

history is he going to be remembered as Alth Landon or is he going to be remembered as Margaret Chase Smith.

And then I realize even among our listeners, 98% probably go,

Margaret Chase Smith, what is that about?

Right?

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