In America Today the fabric of our nation would never felt more divided. And we are too fixated on our differences. Hes black, hes white. He grew up in the city, and hes a farm boy from utah. Hes a democrat, and hes a republican. On paper, we could not be more different. And yet we are both dads. We both love college basketball. We both have really stylish haircuts. And we are both proud americans. We disagree passionately on lots of issues. But we are friends. And we respect each other. Politics is important. But it should not define us or destroy our relationships. His name is spencer cox. And his name is wes moore. And we approve this message. Please welcome to the stage, chairman of the board of trustees of the Ronald Reagan president ial foundation and institute, mr. Fred ryan. [applause] mr. Ryan good morning. Welcome to the reagan institute. We are delighted today to be joined by governor cox and first lady abby cox. Thank you for joining us this morning. Each year the chair of the National Governors association tackles an issue they care deeply about. Ultimately they shape that issue into the initiative that helps them define their time as nga leader. As this years chair, governor cox took on a bold challenge. Getting americans to get along better. The governors disagree Better Initiative was born of a deep concern over polarization in our country. Governor cox recognized the nation needs leaders to step up and model a more positive path forward, and the governors to be the front line of this work. The nga and organizations around the country have convened conversations recorded as, written not beds, and organize debates in service of the role of disagreeing better. To learn more about the progress of this program and ways we can expand it, were delighted to have the governor with us this morning. Please welcome the 18th governor of the state of utah, spencer cox. [applause] welcome, governor pritzkers great to have you here at the institute. Gov. Cox we will welcome yall to utah whenever you want to come. Mr. Ryan we will take that as an invitation. We are working to showcase innovative programs helping close the divide and help find Common Ground among americans. Of all the things you could do as chair of the nga, you picked this issue. Could you share a little bit about why this was important and why disagree better became your signature issue . Gov. Cox thank you again for having me here picked it is a true honor to be here and i am so excited for this center. It is timely. It is so necessary. We get to do an initiative and bill mcbride, the head of the nga, is with us here today. Governors before me have had wonderful initiatives. Computer science in our school. Infrastructure. Teen mental health. And we were looking at those types of initiatives. At the top of our list we were looking at health care reform. We looked at Critical Minerals and energy policy. More traditional issues. This had always been in the back of our minds. It became very clear that we cannot solve our nations problems if we hate each other. And we were seeing so much dysfunction in washington, d. C. I think that was on display yesterday, although dysfunction was replaced with a little bit of function which was kind of nice for a change. I want to give credit where it is due. And so, we started kind of kicking this idea. Could we elevate civility although this is a little different, we can touch on that in a minute. Could we elevate that issue to become an issue like guns or abortion or Something Else . I fact, i would put it above all the other issues. Because again, if we truly care about doing things, and sadly, there are elected officials who are not interested in solving problems, who are here for performative reasons. But could we try to do something there . So i have to say, this was not just a feelgood something that we made up. We reached out to experts, researchers, we spent a lot of time with stanfords polarization and social change lab, darkness and others who have really tried to influence the work that we are doing. This is something i cared about before i was mgh chair. He saw the ads i did with governor moore. I had done an ad in 2020 with my democratic opponent when i was running for governor. A friend of mine had talked to me in the end of september and said i am really worried about what is happening in our country. 2020, we were on the president ial cycle, so 2020 we had had rioting across the country in the wake of George Floyds murder, and then we were already hearing from my party that we were undermining the legitimacy of an election that had not even happened yet. So she said, isnt there something i can do . I said, i dont know, what can i do . But it kept me up all weekend. I called my opponent that next week and said, i have this crazy idea. What if we did an ad together, and he was very confused. A campaign ad. But i talked him through and i said i know you care about our country and i do too. So we did something similar to that where he said, i am Chris Peterson and i think you should vote for me. While we disagree on a lot of things, we both agree we can disagree without hitting each other, that we care about our country, and we will accept the results of this election, whatever they are. That ad went viral and that was hopeful to me that there is a majority out there. Stanford tested that ad is one of interventions with 35,000 people and found it has a measurable impact in lowering the propensity towards violence and depolarizing. So as we were kind of kicking this idea around without, maybe we can convince other governors to do this as well and that is how disagree better was born. Mr. Ryan if you look at the research data, and i am sure you have, it is disturbing to see how divided we are at this moment in a country and how difficult it is to find Common Ground. From your perspective, how did we get here . What brought us to this point . Gov. Cox we have thought a lot about this. We have talked to researchers about this. And i have come to my own conclusions about how we got here. And i like to start with the breakdown of institutions. I think that is kind of where this starts. If you go back to the 1830s and you read about alexiss visit here and the thriving of institutions that were so important to our country, especially religious institutions, but so many other volunteer organizations. We did not rely on government to do all of these things pretty we had a strong civil society. If we needed into hospital, we built a hospital. There was a rootedness and connectedness that was so important. Professor Robert Putnam wrote a book which i am sure most of you remember, over 20 years ago, maybe 25 years ago. To me, that was kind of the first sign of trouble. That we were lonelier than ever before. The concept was that more people were bowling in the United States than ever before, but there were fewer bowling leagues than ever before. Instead of forming bowling leagues, we had community and thriving, people would bowl by themselves. So this loneliness epidemic that he kind of found and started talking about was growing in this country pretty americans had fewer real friends than ever before. And we are wired for connection. And so that predated social media. Then we lay cell phones and social media on top of that. Now you have fake connections, not real connections. I dont have any real friends, but we need tribes, so we can all hate the same people together on facebook. So we started those tribes. And then the algorithms of social media kind of took over our lives and cable news. And they figured out how to get us addicted to contempt, which is a real thing. Tim shriver, who is here with us, and his organization, they talk often about this. Outrage is as addicting as opioids, as gambling, as sugar. It hits the same receptors in our brain. And so now we are in our tribes, algorithms are pushing us towards this, cable news figured it out too, that we can get addicted to outrage, and never have to have real conversations with anyone different from us. Again, i think there are lots of things, but all of those things lined up. And then what happens is, now you have the perfect recipe for conflict entrepreneurs, in the media but also in politics, to kind of step into this void. And use fear and divisiveness to bring us together and tear us apart, if that makes sense. Bring a tribe together, but by defining others and tearing us apart, and we end up with this kind of morass that we find ourselves in today. Mr. Ryan eric schmitt has defined as three pieces for certain media outlets, successfully get revenue, they need viewers or cliques, and to do that they need outrage. Back to disagree better, you have rolled this out the last few months. Can you talk about the areas you have seen the greatest success, then maybe about the areas where there is still a need for more impact, and maybe even how it can be scaled further . Gov. Cox the area of greatest impact has been, i think, a little surprising to all of us. Again, in this hyper polarized world i thought i might get left out of the room when i even brought up this concept to my fellow governors. It was the exact opposite. I first presented it to the republican governor, since that is how they choose. National governors association, one of the last bastions of true bipartisan work, republicans and democrats working together, we alternate chair and vice chair every year. So the democrat from colorado is my vice chair. But the republicans choose their chair and the democrats choose their chair. So i presented it to my republican colleagues and was pleasantly surprised at the response, how excited they were. Even some of them who would say, i cannot say this publicly, but we desperately need this and i want to help if i can behind the scenes. Even better, those who are willing to help in front of the scenes. We have had now 20 governors who have filmed ads like the one i have done, most of them was someone from the other party, a mayor from their state, someone that they respect. And so thats been great. Also, just the overwhelming response from the public. Everywhere we go we hear, this is so refreshing. Like, we used to do this, we used to know how to do this. They are desperate for it. We talk often about the statistics and the pole and that shows how bad it is out there. Im also optimistic about the polling that shows 70 of americans hate our policies right now. They are hungry for Something Different. There is an exhaustive majority out there, and we have seen that. Also, how many great organizations are involved in this work . If nothing else, i think our greatest accomplishment will have been bringing all of those organizations together to have these conversations. They are all out there, but they have never really gotten together to see how they can maximize their potential. And so if anything outlives me with this, in july, i hope it is and it is up in july, it is that they are working together to solve this problem. The hard part is scaling this. We have these ads excuse me. When people see these ads, they like them, they are really inspired by them. They know it has an impact. We know from stanfords work that these can help depolarizing us as a nation. Frank luntz also did some work around this. He did a massive poll and found it was overwhelmingly positive. People are dying for anything like this. And yet we just dont have the resources. We put them on social media and hope people watch them. I would love to see these running during the nba finals. So, its kind of budget and scale that is an issue. And then just hoping more people understand. The incentive structure in our country is all misaligned. There is no incentive to do stuff like this. So we are trying to help convince governors first, because governors have to actually do stuff. That is why we kind of thought they are the best group to work together. We do this bipartisan work anyway. But outside of that, to help people understand, not just that it is a good thing to do for our country but that it is good for politics, that you can get elected or reelected doing this. There are some problems with the way we select candidates that makes it a little more difficult to do this. Where again, the incentives are to be performative, to be loud, to be outrageous. Even though the vast majority of americans dont want that. There is a misalignment there. And so that is a piece we still need to figure out. Mr. Ryan on that point, how the political incentives, at least maybe in congress as an example, are at odds with trying to increase civility, trying to find Common Ground. Some of the most visible of congress have their visibility because of the outrageous things they do, the divisive things they do, their place in social media. Gov. Cox i dont mean to correct you, but i would say all of the most visible. Mr. Ryan so how do we change the incentives . They are doing it because it works for them. Maybe not for everybody, but for those who are doing it. How do we change the incentives so that does not work for someone who is seeking office . Gov. Cox again, i think there are some structural pieces that are not necessarily part of what we are doing what that there are other groups working on that are important from an electoral standpoint. But there are things we can all do. I do think we need to take a hard look at the internet and social media in general. Just finished a book and had a great conversation with the offer with an author called my greatest fight that i highly recommend. And he has a very some very bold ideas around completely restructuring the internet itself, the very fabric of the internet and how it works, to help us so that we dont just have a few very large duopolies or monopolylike companies controlling all of this and controlling those algorithms that i think is really critical to this conversation. But i have to say, the answer is truly all of us, and at the local level deciding that we are going to make this initiative. So that when you are in a town hall with a candidate and youre asking them what their position is on abortion or guns or position on guns or whatever, if you ask what are you doing polarize our, where you going to do to bring together to solve problems . As get out of the question and our hope is we are trying to change the structure to the people note you can talk about this because the National Language youre working on language to do this and then to show backlash is it what you think its going to become everyone has an ad like this and they were pretty nervous like whats going to happen this backlash . Ten to one, it is so refreshing and that gives information to do at whon and hope is look see this would never run for office say i do this. That interests and we can get different candidates running for office. Us the structure now that brings outst people who thrive in that type of environment. Talking about the challenges in thisng moment caucus much moe to go. We are looking at College Campuses and one thing we spent a lot of time on his a. I. Disinformation misinformation. Th it is incumbent on every person every single one of us to find ways to bridge a divide and be builders and architects instead of arsonists. And im glad you brought up ai. Its about to get so much worse. The power of ai tote tear us apt is incredible. So w what can we do . Spent time facetoface with people who are different than us. I get criticism. One of criticism by get mostly on the right is you want us to go along to get along. You do not believe in anything you want to hang out with democrats. They are not all bad. [laughter] this is not a kindness initiative. We need more civility awaited more kindness. We chose the word disagree on purpose. We want people to stay true to the principal and values to be passionate. Not to ask you to compromise on anything. Thats the first part. On the left the attacks are generally, why would i engage with those people . Those people are irrational. Those people do not want me too exist. Or whatever it is. I think that screaming at each other is dangerous it. Not talking to each other at all is more dangerous. That will never lead to a solution and make our country a better place. And so we have to have real conversations with people who are different from us. We find out what we do that and i can give countless examples is we are not as different as we thought we were. That is one. Number two is we need to stop defining ourselves by our political identities. One is growing up in my congregation and in my town i did not know who republicans or crdemocrats work. Were. Thats so far down the lis. But it did with governor moore is a great example of how to do this. Im an mba fan i am an american. I am a republican or democrat was so far down the list. So finding shared identities is really important. Service is a big one. When we serve our communities and give back to the experts tell us thats a great way to de polarize. There is a bond that forms we sacrifice and get back to make a place better. Thats another really, really important one. That is something that comes from jon adams. He talks about political virtues. We often do not talk about virtue these days. But he had a quotes, he talks about the political virtues of patients, moderation and humility. Patience, moderation and humility without those things we are all a ravenous beast of prey. You understand the natural man the natural human instinct are divisive. Our brutish and short and all of those things. If we can practice humility and moderation now it seems almost humilityo talk about and patience and politics. But one of my favorite quotes is talk of the spirit of liberty. We think in america about the spirit of liberty we think about an eagle with a machine gun. [laughter] a truck with an american flag. What ever. Hef said the spirit of liberty s the spirit which is not too sure its right. The spirit of liberty seeks to understand the minds of men and women. That is very powerful to me this idea im going to listen and listen to learn not listen to debate. We ask people to assess question youre in a high conflict situation just to ask, tell me more about why you feel that way . That shows your interest in the other person. It shows the humility, a willingness to listen and understand. Gives an opportunity to cool down. And then gives the other person a chance to actually think about what they believe. They asked the question multiple times. Eventually you will find Common Ground and may be, may be a common solution maybe not but that is okay. If you contact ideas instead of people those are little things. Little things add up over time it will make it better in whatever sphere influence we have. Cooks are going to questions and just a Second Period i wanted to point out when you walked in the f