Utah Governor Cox, Incoming NGA Chair, Calls on Governors to Restore Dignity to Public Debate

In his opening meeting this past week as Chair of the National Governors Association, Republican Governor Spencer Cox of Utah called on the nation's governors to join his initiative Disagreeing Better: Healthy Conflict for Better Policy. The initiative, designed to improve the quality of public debate, urges governors to be leaders in elevating the substance and reducing the toxic style of current political discourse.

Citing the warnings of our nation’s founders and their understanding of human nature, Governor Cox said: “We know what happens when people get too much power and too much authority and are too full of themselves. So we need to have incentives to keep those things in check, because many politicians are using our institutions for performance instead of substance.”

Governor Cox was joined on stage by Timothy P. Shriver, Chairman of Special Olympics and founder of UNITE, a group formed to ease divisions in the country. In 2022, Shriver and his colleagues introduced the Dignity Index, an eight-point scale for measuring how we talk to each other when we disagree. Do I treat you with dignity, which means I see myself in you? Or do I treat you with contempt, which means I see myself above you? 

“We can summarize the problem in the country in one word,” said Shriver. “The problem is contempt. We have challenges on immigration, and education, and health care, and energy – but the biggest problem is the rise of contempt as the problem-solving tool of choice.”

"When I use contempt, I’m no longer disagreeing on the issue of immigration. I’m attacking you. You are the problem. You become not only ‘not good’, but potentially evil; and not just potentially evil, but in need of destruction,” Shriver continued. “If we treat our opponents with contempt, we are doing nothing to solve the problems in the country.”

Governor Cox expanded on the point, “We use fear and divisiveness as Tim was mentioning. We say those people are the problem. They are trying to destroy our country. And this happens on both the right and the left. Politicians say that if you don’t vote for me, then they are going to destroy your lives and your kids and our planet."
 

Going Deeper

The Dignity Index, Shriver explained, is designed to wake us up and create a new set of incentives. Contempt causes division, and dignity eases division. When we put a spotlight on dignity and contempt, we use more dignity and less contempt. We begin to expect the same from people who inform us, entertain us and represent us – and that’s how we can form a constituency that rewards dignity and starts to change the culture.Tim Shriver holds up a copy of the Dignity Index Eight-Point Scale at the National Governors Association summer meeting in Atlantic City on July 14, 2023.

This power of the Index comes from what Shriver calls "The Mirror Effect." 

“When we first hear about the Dignity Index, we think it’s a tool for judging others," he said.  “But when we start to use it, we find it’s a mirror for seeing ourselves. I’ve seen it happen myself. It gets in my head and I start to see differently. I start saying to myself, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t be talking to people that way. Maybe I shouldn’t be listening to people who talk that way.’”

"The change has to start with us," Shriver said. "We all have some responsibility for our division. It didn't just happen to us. We're doing this to ourselves and we can undo it."

The UNITE team saw this change begin to happen on a small scale last year when they launched the Utah Dignity Index Demonstration during the 2022 midterm elections. Amanda Ripley, author of High Conflict, wrote about the project in a Politico Magazine article and quoted Republican pollster Frank Luntz on the Index. “It is long overdue,” Luntz said. “No one has tried this before. It has the potential to be incredibly impactful.”

Now the Dignity Index team is testing whether the Index can make an impact on a national scale. They’re launching “Students for Dignity” groups at universities, working with computer scientists on AI tools, offering on-line education guides, and planning to release dignity scores on candidates' political language in the Presidential campaign.

Shriver urged the governors to give the Dignity Index a try. “Just read it,” he said. “It takes two minutes. Then share it. Spend five minutes in your next staff meeting asking people to look at it. Don’t preach. Just show it to them. And share it with your political allies in the legislature, and then your political opponents.”

Then, Shriver urged others afterward to take the Dignity Pledge. The Pledge reads: 

As an American who knows and loves my country, I am convinced there is no America without democracy, no democracy without healthy debate, and no healthy debate without dignity: therefore, I pledge to do more to treat others with dignity, not contempt.

“Dignity is the foundation of a New Politics and a New Patriotism,” says Shriver.  “Nothing is more unAmerican than hating your fellow Americans.”

More on Governor Cox's NGA Initiative

Governor Spencer Cox, in his third year as Utah’s Governor, has emerged as a national leader and advocate for more productive communication between policy makers with opposing viewpoints.

“We don’t need to disagree less,” Cox says.  “We need to disagree better.”  More information on Governor Cox’s initiative, “Disagree Better: Healthy Conflict for Better Policy,” can be found here. And recent press about the initiative can be found in The Washington Post, Axios, and the Deseret News.

The Dignity Index

Governors, staff, and NGA partners at the convening received copies of the Dignity Index scale (which can be found online here) along with a short set of suggestions on how to disagree with dignity.

To take The Dignity Pledge, learn more about the Dignity Index, and download resources and conversation guides visit dignityindex.us.

For updates on the Dignity Index movement, visit dignityindex.us and sign up on the link at the bottom of the home page.