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Utah Gov. Spencer Cox holds his hand over his heart during the national anthem for the first day of the National Association of Governors’ Summer Meeting at the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City on Thursday, July 11, 2024.

Courtesy Utah Governor’s Office

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Robb Willer, professor of sociology, psychology and organizational behavior at Stanford University, presents research during the first day of the National Association of Governors’ Summer Meeting at the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City on Thursday, July 11, 2024.

Courtesy Utah Governor’s Office

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Utah Gov. Spencer Cox holds the hand of his wife, first lady Abby Cox, during the second day of the National Association of Governors’ Summer Meeting at the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City on Friday, July 12, 2024.

Courtesy Utah Governor’s Office

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The same week that Utah Gov. Spencer Cox marked a year working to convince many of the nation’s governors and the people in their states to fight toxic polarization, someone took a shot at former President Donald Trump.

The shooting at a Pennsylvania campaign rally that injured Trump is being investigated as an assassination attempt, the motive of which remains a mystery. It comes at a particularly fraught moment in America as polarizing politics draw lines between friends and family.

Calls for calm and unity quickly followed the shooting, where one audience member was killed and two more were wounded. The gunman was also shot and killed by law enforcement.

Just two days before the violence that shocked the nation, Cox was with members of the National Governors Association at the organization’s annual summer meeting, hosted this year in Salt Lake City, the capital of his home state. There, Cox heard a report on a Stanford study that measured the effect of public service announcements that governors and leaders of opposing parties recorded together as part of Cox’s “Disagree Better” campaign.

Did the ads work? Yes, the researchers found.

Stanford study findings

Study participants who viewed the ads reported experiencing a change in their feelings of partisan animosity, their receptiveness to having conversations about different viewpoints, and more support for bipartisanship.

Perhaps most appealing for political candidates, the ads also boosted the favorability of the governors in the videos.

Cox’s “Disagree Better” campaign, the initiative he led during his time as chair of the National Governors Association, focuses on breaking down tribalism and toxic partisanship, telling Americans that they don’t have to agree on everything, and when they do disagree on something, they can and should still talk about it, and do so in a respectful way.

Robb Willer, professor of sociology, psychology and organizational behavior at Stanford University, studies polarization, which he called a thorny, multi-level problem. On the one hand, he said, Americans are dealing with it in their communities, workplaces and families. On the other, it is standing in the way of leaders responding to emergencies, solving social problems and accomplishing goals for the people they serve.

“If we have any kind of state or federal level, societal level goals, we’re in the business of trying to address polarization. Because if you don’t have a plan for navigating partisan division, you don’t have a plan for social impact, not a complete one,” Willer told the group.

The study played either the Disagree Better videos or nonpartisan PSAs for 6,500 people from all walks of life, then measured and compared their reactions. The viewings amounted to just 90 seconds, Willer said, but had a noticeable impact.

And to those governors in highly partisan states who fear appearing too chummy with the opposing side could cost them support from their base, Willer, who also does research at times for political campaigns, shared a finding from the study that recorded an even bigger impact.

Study participants’ perceptions of the governors in the Disagree Better PSAs reported they found them more favorable after seeing the videos. And surprisingly, Willer said, primary voters in the survey were even more impressed.

The result held true, he noted, at both extremes of the political spectrum.

“So when people saw these public service announcements, they didn’t just turn towards bipartisan openness, openness to difficult conversations, they also said that ‘those people that did that were pretty cool,'” Willer said.

Trump’s shooting comes amid peak polarization in U.S. Is it too late to disagree better?

Even though the country’s political rhetoric has reached a fever pitch ahead of the 2024 General Election, Cox continues to push messages of hope — that it’s not too late for the country to change its tune. But, he said, it will take work.

The morning after Trump’s assassination attempt, Cox reacted with a post on X referring to a video of his closing message on Friday to his fellow governors.

“In light of the assassination attempt on Pres. Trump, I think it’s more important today than it was two days ago,” Cox wrote. “It’s about building and optimism and hope. It’s about loving our country and doing the hard work of bridge building. I make mistakes all the time, but I’m trying to be better. I hope you will listen.

In his seven-minute closing speech, Cox recalled a day as a young boy when his uncle gave him a task to tear down an old, decrepit barn in rural Utah. He said he couldn’t wait to jump in the backhoe and knock the building down. In a matter of minutes, the barn was reduced to rubble.

“Tearing things down is really easy. The dopamine hits. It is so much fun,” Cox said. “It turned out, I was pretty good at it.”

Cox said he obviously was making a metaphor for political discourse in America today.

“We’ve gotten really, really good at tearing things down. And people down. And institutions down. And parties down,” he said. “Building is hard.”

Cox said it’s much more difficult to build institutions than it is to tear them down. He pointed to his fellow governors in the room and said, “being a governor is hard work. Because you are the builders, that’s what you’ve been hired to do.”

“The pundits can tear down. The arsonists can tear down. The conflict entrepreneurs that are all around us… they’re really good at tearing down,” he said. “But we need some architects. We need more builders. And that’s exactly what we’re trying to do.”

Cox concluded by reading a quote from author and political analyst Yuval Levin, referring to his book “American Covenant.” Levin, Cox said, “hates the word ‘optimism.'”

“He said, ‘I think optimism and pessimism are more alike than they may seem. They’re both basically arguments for passivity. They’re ways of thinking about what’s just going to happen inevitably. So I’m not an optimist. I certainly don’t think good things are just going to happen. That seems like a crazy way to react to all of human history,'” Cox quoted of Levin. “‘But I am hopeful. And I think hope is the virtue that sits between the vices of optimism and pessimism. And it’s the view that things could be better if we are willing to make them so.'”

So, Cox admitted he is “not optimistic about our country. And I don’t think any of us should be.”

“I think it’s crazy to think our country is just going to get better,” Cox said.

Cox said that he himself often says the political “pendulum” swings back and forth. But, “that’s crazy talk,” and there’s no guarantee that “we aren’t going to continue to tear ourselves apart.”

“There is nothing that says that we won’t inevitably have another civil war. It’s happened before. And it can happen again. And it will happen again if we don’t do the work,” Cox said. “But I am hopeful. I am very hopeful about our country. … I’m hopeful because there are good people in this country that are willing to make it so.”

Utah News Dispatch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news source covering government, policy and the issues most impacting the lives of Utahns.

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