Why Utah’s governor is being called ‘healer in chief’

The assassination last Wednesday of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on a Utah college campus has sparked “national mourning but also vitriol,” as NBC News puts it.

In days filled with division, disparagement and calls for revenge by some other politicians and public figures, the civil but sober tone of Utah GOP Gov. Spencer Cox has brought moral clarity to a moment of angst and broken through the rancor, members of both parties have said in interviews with NBC News. 

So NBC News is describing Cox as ‘healer in chief.’

Cox said at a news conference on Friday, “To my young friends out there: You are inheriting a country where politics feels like rage. It feels like rage is the only option … We can choose a different path.” 

The 50-year-old two-term governor has dedicated much of his time in public office to building bridges across the aisle, launching a “Disagree Better” campaign in 2023 with Colorado Democratic Gov. Jared Polis in an effort to tone down the toxicity of U.S. politics, says The Wall Street Journal.

Cox has partnered with Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., to tackle social issues such as the loneliness epidemic and social media’s impact on children, says NBC News.

On the same day Cox made his appeal for restraint, President Trump said on Fox News, “The radicals on the left are the problem, and they’re vicious and they’re horrible and they’re politically savvy.”

Yet the president called Cox after his news conference and complimented him, Cox says. And a senior White House official has told NBC News they feel Cox has done a “tremendously good job” handling the aftermath of Kirk’s killing.

On Wednesday, Cox and Polis both dealt with shootings at schools in their states. A 16-year-old boy opened fire at a Colorado high school, injuring two students. The two governors, who’ve developed a close relationship working on the “Disagree Better” initiative, traded emails and expressed sympathies. 

Historian Jon Meacham says, “When we lose the capacity to engage in argument and dissent and debate peaceably, we are breaking faith with the American covenant. And the American covenant is that we live in contention with each other, but we’re not at each other’s throats.”

As far as what our political leaders can do to keep the covenant, he says, “Make the case. Tell the story. What do you want the country to be? This is why history matters, I think, more than ever, because there’s not a hell of a lot going on in the present that you want to say, ‘Yeah, we want more of that,’ right?

“You want to tell the story of Omaha Beach. You want to tell the story of the Pettus Bridge. You want to tell the story of Gettysburg. Because those were moments where imperfect people actually created a more perfect union. It’s not that they were superhuman. Quite the opposite,” he says. They got through it “barely,” he says.

But “If they could do it, then we can, too.”