Utah Gov. Spencer Cox’s statesmanship should be an example to Republicans

When President Joe Biden 
visited Utah
 on Wednesday ahead of the
2024 elections
, Gov. Spencer Cox (R-UT) did something unexpected: He welcomed the president.

Cox, a Republican, also had some strong words for those in his party who didn’t want him to welcome Biden. “There has been some question over whether or not the governor of the state of Utah would welcome the president of a different party,” 
he said
. “I think it’s insane that we are having those conversations in our country today.”

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Cox went even further in, saying, essentially, that he wished Biden success on the job: “When the president succeeds, America succeeds, and we want to find ways to work together.”

Cox’s statement is an example of statesmanship.

In Profiles in Courage, John F. Kennedy defined political courage as a politician’s willingness to follow their convictions and lead on important issues even when their electorate is against them. As the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum 
summarized it
, “The book is about [Kennedy’s] admiration of the courage shown by elected leaders in the face of adverse factions like their electorates, popular opinion, and political action committees that pull these elected men in different directions.” 

For Kennedy, political courage was an essential ingredient for a statesman. Our country, he suggested, needs men and women who are willing to lead on important issues even when that leadership poses a threat to their reelection campaigns.

Cox’s statement is exactly the kind of leadership that Kennedy had in mind. For one thing, it’s politically risky. Utah is a reliably red state and went for former President Donald Trump by a 
20-point margin
 in 2020. Cox’s biggest hurdle to reelection isn’t winning over blue voters; it’s fending off a primary challenger. In our current political environment, showing respect to Biden leaves him more open to just such a challenge from the Right. In other words, Cox isn’t just 
virtue signaling
. He’s risking his political capital to lead on an important point.

And there’s no doubt that the rising levels of fear and anger we experience toward members of the other party (what political scientists term “affective polarization”) is an important point. Writing for the Political Empathy Project, Martin Kariuki 
calls polarization
 a “national security threat.” He argues that “our inability to compromise or unite on basic foreign policy presents weakness to belligerent adversaries like China and Russia.”

Russia may even be actively promoting affective polarization in the United States. 
According to
 Jonathon Morgan, a former adviser to the State Department on digital responses to terrorism, “The broader Russian strategy is pretty clearly about destabilizing the country by focusing on and amplifying existing divisions, rather than supporting any one political party.” One of our chief geopolitical rivals sees our rising anger and fear toward members of the other political party as a chink in our national armor.

This isn’t an excuse for saber-rattling, of course, nor is it an excuse to expand the scope of the federal government under the theory that another government program will help. Bigger government is the answer to few problems in life, and affective polarization is certainly not one of them. But if other countries see our fear and anger as a weakness to exploit, that’s worth taking note of — especially when the best solution is simply for us all as individuals to show people across the aisle a little more civility. Cox is taking the lead in doing just that.

Monica Guzman, senior fellow with Braver Angels, recently moderated a panel of 20 governors to talk about affective polarization. Her takeaway was clear: Most elected officials want to lead on this issue, but they’re scared. “If I’ve learned anything working with elected officials to bridge our toughest divides,” 
she said
, “it’s that they are just as tired of the toxicity as we are, if not more.” At the same time, it’s “politically risky to champion healthy disagreement with officials across the aisle in a toxically polarized society.”

Cox shows us what it looks like when our leaders’ political courage outweighs their fear. Let us hope that more elected officials follow his example.

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Julian Adorney is a writer and marketing consultant with
fee.org
and a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He has previously written for National Review, the Federalist, and other outlets.