This week, as the nation’s Governors meet in Washington, D.C., for the 2024 NGA Winter Meeting, Governor Cox led several public forums to help address toxic polarization in America.
Although they're from different parties, Cox and Moore have also struck up a friendship, and it was what led the two governors to come together to speak side by side, where they praised each other, and sought shared connection despite their differences — Cox, a self-described farm boy from Utah, and Moore, the first Black governor of Maryland — and all but pleaded with Americans to do better. They spoke at a forum held at the soaring National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., filled with more than 800 people, while another 1,800 attendees watched online.
Editor’s note: This story is part of Deseret Magazine’s January/February double issue addressing political polarization. In early July 1787, the delegates who gathered in Philadelphia to create a written constitution for the new nation faced the real prospect of failure. In his letter transmitting the Constitution to Congress, George Washington attributed this surprising turn of events — what one popular account of the convention called the “Miracle at Philadelphia” — to the “spirit of amity, and of that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensable.”
Editor’s note: This story is part of Deseret Magazine’s January/February double issue addressing political polarization. Very few Americans thought that the policies of the other side were a threat to the country or worried about their child marrying a spouse who belonged to a different political party. In the run-up to the 2020 presidential elections, both 9 out of 10 supporters of Joe Biden and 9 out of 10 supporters of Donald Trump were convinced that a victory by their opponent would cause “lasting harm to the United States.”