Judy Woodruff moderates a conversation with Spencer J. Cox, governor of Utah (R), and Wes Moore, governor of Maryland (D), about how to depolarize our country, the role that national service can play, and how to disagree better
Judy Woodruff: The reason this conversation has come about, in large part, is because of the National Governors Association meeting in Washington. Governor Cox, you are the chair of the Governors Association this year, and your initiative is called Disagree Better. I want to ask the two of you, what does that mean? Why disagree better right now?
Utah Governor Spencer J. Cox: We had this realization that we can’t accomplish or solve the biggest problems facing our nation today if we all hate each other. And so when we looked at what we felt was the singlemost pressing problem in our country, it is the contempt that we feel for our fellow Americans. This isn’t just another civility initiative, it’s not just about being nice to each other, although we desperately need more of that. It is relearning how to disagree the right way, how to have debate, how to stay true to your principles, your core values, without demeaning and tearing apart the other side, and in so doing, actually find where there is common ground, where we can meet each other to solve problems. So that was the idea behind this initiative, and we had no idea how it would be received. But there is an exhausted majority out there, and it has been very well received.
Woodruff: Governor Moore, why did you want to be part of this?
Maryland Governor Wes Moore: You know, I just — I believe deeply that you can’t claim to love the country if you hate half of the people in it.
Cox: Amen.
Moore: I don’t come from a political family. I don’t come from a political background. I was a combat veteran with the 82nd Airborne. I ran a small business in Maryland, and then I ran one of the largest poverty-fighting organizations in this country. The idea that we’re supposed to hate somebody because of their political affiliation is not something that I understand. And so I believe deeply that if we’re actually going to get stuff done, that means understanding and getting back to the basic humanity of what it is we’re trying to accomplish and keeping that as a north star.
Woodruff: Governor Cox, what do you think is at the bottom of this polarization, this polarized time we are living in? What do you think is the cause of it?
Cox: I could spend all afternoon on this but let me try to be concise here. A few decades ago, maybe in the early ’90s, we started to see that division happening in Congress. And certain politicians have figured out how to take advantage of dividing us to help themselves, using fear and anger. It’s very motivating. And then the Internet and social media, which were supposed to bring us all together, have done the exact opposite at a time when, as Americans, we are losing community, and we’re losing the institutions that have historically brought us together. We are less religious than ever before, and all these community institutions that brought us together to take care of each other, they’re all falling apart. And so we’re lonely. We’re wired for connection, we’re desperate, and now we don’t have it, so we’re finding it in unhealthy places. And, you know, if I don’t have any real friends, at least I can — we can hate the same people together on Facebook, right? That’s where we are and what we’re doing now. And I want to go back to something that Wes said: this idea that there is nothing more un-American than hating our fellow Americans, right? We never defined ourselves by our political parties growing up. I didn’t know who the Republicans were in my town, who the Democrats were in my congregation. I did not know that. That was like the 20th or 30th thing you would know. We were Americans first — Utahns, Utah Jazz fans, you know, Patriots fans, Jets fans, whatever.
Woodruff: Right.
Cox: We were dads, we were Mormons, or Catholics, or . . . political party was so far down the list, and now it’s the first thing. It’s the first thing most people define themselves as. That is crazy and so unhealthy in a pluralistic society like ours. If that’s how we see ourselves first and foremost, we’re sincerely in trouble. The pandemic made things even worse. We’re more divided, and we’ve got to get back to redefining ourselves.
Woodruff: Governor Moore, from where you sit — you’ve been in office 13 months — what do you see? What is going on that’s driving this harsh partisanship?
Moore: I think a lot of what’s going on is that people are just opting out. They are opting into their own social corners. They are opting into listening to news — not to be educated, but to be validated. They are opting out of having a measure of societal connection. One of the first things we pushed and got done in our first 90 days is that Maryland is now the first state in this country that has a service-year option for all of our high school graduates. They can serve seniors, they can serve young people, they can serve veterans, they can serve returning citizens, the environment — completely their choice. Service is sticky. Those who serve together generally stay together. I know I saw that with people I served with in Afghanistan who came and campaigned for me when I was running for governor. Many of them were not Marylanders. Many of them were not Democrats, but they literally came and knocked on doors on my behalf saying, “Let me tell you about the guy I served with.” I believe in this time of political divisiveness and political vitriol that service will save us, and that’s why we want to make our state the state that serves. We believe that’s a core way of being able to heal these divides because if we’re a state that gets to know each other again, we’re going to be a state that’s willing to compete together and we’ll be ready to win.
Cox: We’ve got the incentive structure all wrong now in America. We’re elevating the loudest voices in the room, and politics is now full of performers, not people who want to solve a problem. But governors still have to do stuff. Potholes are not partisan. In my more lucid moments, I get rid of the traditional right-left framing and I look at builders and destroyers because there are builders on the right and the left and in the middle, and there are destroyers on the right and the left — and probably some in the middle. Who are the people that are building, who are trying to create something? It’s so easy to tear down. And now we have a Congress full of people who are good at tearing things down but terrible at building anything.
Woodruff: As we know, there has been an unprecedented surge of migrants coming across the southern border. We now have Republicans saying that the border is out of control. They have turned it into a huge issue. Is that criticism accurate?
Moore: Yes, very accurate. It’s very accurate because it’s the governors who end up taking on the responsibility of making sure that people are safe, and housed, and clothed, et cetera, and without enough supports and without enough policy that can really help to come up with a long-term solution.
Woodruff: I want to raise a couple of very difficult issues, like abortion. What would be an example of a civil, productive discussion and debate about abortion?
Cox: So I think there are a couple ways this could go, right? One, we can debate when life starts and the value of life. Those debates have been going on for a long time. We know we’re probably going to end up at a different place. So are there some areas where we could find agreement? Could we focus on making abortion as rare as possible because most pro-abortion people also believe that abortion is not a great thing? Could we agree on sex education or contraception availability? Could we do more to help single moms and babies? If we care about life, we should care about all life, not just life until it’s born, right? And so, could we focus on those areas? Are there places for agreement? We know we’re never going to agree on this piece, but could we agree on that piece? And I think that’s an area for rational debate and rational problem-solving.
Woodruff: Governor Moore, what would you add on abortion? Is it possible to have, around that highly charged subject, a civil debate?
Moore: It is, because I think there’s a difference between having a civil debate and saying that we’re all going to come to the same conclusion. We might not come to the same conclusion. My belief on abortion is that abortion and reproductive rights are health care. It’s women’s health care, and I’m not going to take away a woman’s right to her health care. I also know that the ability to focus on things like education and prevention, those parts of reproductive health, also does mean making sure that women and girls are getting the education they need about family planning and that type of thing. I think that there is a way, even if we end up at a different point at the conclusion, that we can have a respectful debate and respectful disagreement without it turning vitriolic.
Woodruff: Here’s another very difficult issue: guns, crime. Governor Moore, I’ll start with you on this. What would a civil discussion, a productive discussion, look like on guns?
Moore: This is, again, a very challenging and a very personal issue for me. From the time I was 17 years old, when I joined the United States Army, I served with, trained with, and was deployed with paratroopers, and we spent most of our time being trained on weapons with multiple calibers. And I have seen firsthand how destructive they are. I’ve seen firsthand what they do to the human body. I grew up in neighborhoods where the idea of public safety was always a want and not a have. There are just commonsense gun laws that you can put in place, as we’ve done in the state of Maryland. We’re not about taking away firearms from people, but we are about making sure that people can and should feel safe in their own neighborhoods and can feel safe in their own communities.
Woodruff: What would that discussion, that debate look like to you, Governor Cox?
Cox: In Utah the debate would be a little different. My background is very different. I grew up in a rural community, a small town of 1,200 people. I grew up on a farm. I had a gun in my truck every day when I drove to school my sophomore, junior, senior year, as did all of my friends. That’s the way I was raised. You were weird if you didn’t have a shotgun in your truck when you went to school. Now you would never drive to school with a shotgun in your truck, right? That’s crazy. I mean, I get that that’s crazy. We need to recognize our differences instead of dehumanizing and attacking. And I do think it’s important and okay that the laws in Maryland are different from the laws in Utah. It’s not just okay: that is how our country was founded. I think one of the problems that we’ve gotten ourselves into is this idea that in every state, we all have to have exactly the same laws.
Woodruff: Another issue that is getting a lot of attention, has become very hot and difficult: diversity, equity, and inclusion — or DEI. Governor Cox, you recently signed legislation restricting what state supported schools can do. Talk about your thinking about that issue.
Cox: Sure.
Woodruff: And then I want to hear both of you have a discussion about DEI.
Cox: What we did in Utah was a little different than what’s happened in some other states. I was looking for a more positive vision about what does this look like. I do not believe that government should discriminate on the basis of race, ever, at all, period. I take a very universalist approach. I am a student of Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement, and I get the idea that a white person can’t understand what someone of color has experienced. I don’t know what that’s like. But I do believe in a universalism that we are all humans first, and that I can understand what it means to be sad or hurt or attacked unjustly, and I think that’s very important. The more we divide ourselves into groups, the worse off we’re going to be. I think that it is incredibly problematic for the government to be engaged in discrimination on the basis of race — to elevate certain races or certain ethnic groups or certain sexualities that have been oppressed in the past. That’s why I pushed back. And so what we did in Utah was we said, government can’t discriminate. We can’t require you to submit a statement pledging allegiance to DEI to get hired or to advance. But we did not defund DEI. We said we’re going to use DEI to help people who are struggling. We should be looking at first-generation college students. We should be looking to help anybody who’s struggling toward completing a college degree. We should be looking at those who come from poverty and don’t have the same opportunities as other people. That’s going to disproportionately help minorities in the state of Utah, but it’s not going to discriminate distinctly on the basis of skin color.
Woodruff: Governor Moore, how do you see this issue? How do you express your own views, which I assume have some differences with Governor Cox’s?
Moore: I think there is this really warped conflation of what we mean by DEI, and there is a politicization of this idea of simply asking everyone to be acknowledged for who they are, their family history, their family lineage. We want a society that actually looks like the beautiful mosaic of the places that we call home — and so we are focusing on inclusion, focusing on making sure that we have an administration that looks like the state. I also don’t believe that the role of government is telling people what they should and should not read, what books should and should not be in libraries, or telling people whose history is worth reading and understanding and whose history is not. I believe — getting past the acronyms and past the politicization — that this is simply, are we willing to understand and acknowledge our own history? For people who say, well, the reason they’re banning this may be because they don’t want people to feel bad, that’s not the reason. The reason that’s happening is because if people don’t understand their history, they don’t understand their power. That’s the reason I walk into every room I walk into with my head held high and my chest out, because I know my history.
Woodruff: There are governors who are part of the Governors Association who do believe that there should be restrictions on how history is taught. Cox: I would say I’m not one of those. I just want to be very clear. Moore: For those governors who are doing that — not Governor Cox — we have to, as a society, be honest about their motivation. It’s not altruism. It’s not because they don’t want people to feel bad. There is something deeper as to why they don’t want everybody to understand where they’ve come from and the journey that we all collectively have taken to make our society better.
Cox: Yes.
Woodruff: We are at the end of our time, but I want to close with a question to each of you: Where will we be on all of this in five years? Where are we headed, Governor Cox?
Cox: I am a natural optimist, and so I’m going to take that approach. I believe that pendulums always swing, and I think this pendulum will swing, too. I see some kind of green shoots of spring coming up. When we launched the Disagree Better initiative, I thought half the people would think I was crazy and the other half would be angry, and it’s turned out to be a lot less than that. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. We are finding allies. We are finding that there are groups all across the country that are deeply engaged in the work of depolarization. There are wonderful groups — More in Common, Braver Angels, I could name dozens of them — and they care deeply about this. The polling is showing us that Americans are desperate — there is a market failure right now in politics, a huge market failure, and neither party is taking advantage of it. Neither party is capitalizing on it, but somebody will at some point.
Woodruff: Governor Moore, where will we be in five years?
Moore: Well, we’re going to be in a better place. I’m a student of history. I love history. And I go through this exercise sometimes when I’m having a tough day or things didn’t go well or things don’t look good, I spend time reading history because it adds a sense of context to everything. We have to remember the historical contexts of the evolution of this country, of the evolution of our states. And I think if we do that and we’re willing to do what those who came before us did, which is go do the work and not just simply give up or retreat, then I think we are guiding ourselves to a better place. Faith alone is not going to get us there. We have to understand our history and understand the trajectory we’re on. We’ve got to do the work, and we’ve got to get to know each other.
This article is an edited excerpt of a conversation organized and held at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., on February 21, 2024. Reprinted with permission.
Governor Spencer J. Cox is Utah’s 18th governor and served as the 2023–24 chair of the National Governors Association.
Governor Wes Moore is the 63rd governor of the state of Maryland. He is the first Black governor in Maryland’s 246-year history and is the third African American elected governor in the history of the United States.
Judy Woodruff is a senior correspondent and the former anchor and managing editor of the PBS NewsHour. She has covered politics and other news for five decades at NBC, CNN, and PBS. Her most recent series, Judy Woodruff Presents: America at a Crossroads, which is supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York and other funders, is examining the many divisions fracturing the United States.
Carnegie Corporation of New York has provided support for Disagree Better, an initiative developed by the National Governors Association and Governor Spencer Cox to show Americans how political leaders can work through political differences to find solutions to divisive problems. Additionally, the foundation has announced $3 million in philanthropic support for national service initiatives, including $1.1 million for work under way in Utah.
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