Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes
SALT LAKE CITY — As a kid, John Curtis' mother had the same question for him each time he returned from a ski outing: "Did you fall?"
The reason, the Republican congressman told a room full of University of Utah students on Thursday, was because "if you didn't fall, you're not learning." Those falls helped him become a better skier, but Curtis — who has represented Utah's 3rd Congressional District since 2017 and is now vying to be the state's next U.S. Senator — said the same ability to fail doesn't exist in politics, and he thinks it's leading to worse outcomes for governing.
Curtis spoke at the Sutherland Institute's annual series of discussions with Utah's federal delegation Thursday. He picked the title "Reinventing the wheel — but this time, let's try a square" for his forum with Jason Perry, the director of the university's Hinckley Institute of Politics.
"How many of you think government is broken?" Curtis asked the room, in response to a question about why he chose that particular title. Several hands went up. "Too often, we want to fix things thinking the wheel is round, and we're not willing to try a square wheel because everybody knows a square wheel is bad, right? And yet we keep coming up with the same solutions, and they're not working."
Curtis believes that reticence to look for unconventional solutions comes from a culture that doesn't forgive mistakes in the political realm and rewards those who stay in their comfort zones.
"One of the things that I regret about politics is we do not give people an opportunity to fail," he said. "In politics, if I make one tiny mistake, it's going to be on social media, all over, right? ... And politicians, we kind of clamor up and are not willing to make a mistake. But if you're not willing to make a mistake, how are you ever going to find a different way to do things?"
Curtis' trip to the Middle East
The forum discussion came in the wake of an eight-day trip to the Middle East, where the congressman met with leaders from Israel, Jordan, Qatar and Egypt amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Curtis described the experience as "intense," and said he met with the U.S. families of hostages taken in the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, including the mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli American who was confirmed dead last week. He said he sat next to Rachel Goldberg in a meeting before her son's death and saw "how desperate she was to get her son back alive."
Although Israel's ongoing bombardment in Gaza has killed tens of thousands and sparked a fierce backlash from many around the globe, Curtis said throughout the trip he did not see anyone express "feelings of Israel overreacting" to the atrocities committed by Hamas militants on Oct. 7.
"What did come up — every single time — is the absolute necessity to find the path to a ceasefire," he said. "And that's where all of these leaders are focused on."
When it comes to the U.S. policy toward Israel, Curtis said he stands resolutely with the nation but added the key question is: "How do we maintain Israel's right to defend themselves and bring this to an end?"
Are climate activists too 'judgmental'?
Curtis is perhaps best known for starting the Conservative Climate Caucus through which he hopes to present conservative solutions to human-caused climate change and bring fellow Republicans around on the issue. He said it felt "edgy" to first utter the word climate as a Republican, but he doesn't think caring about the environment is anathema to most conservatives.
He compared the partisan split on climate policies to what he called "timeshare traps," where salesman aggressively pitch customers on purchasing shares of a resort.
"You know in your heart you shouldn't do it, and too many people walk out of there doing it," he said. "That's how Republicans are feeling when they're asked about climate. Most of them haven't really thought through the science and didn't really have an argument about science, but they were afraid that if they said the climate has changed ... they would get pressured to doing something they didn't think was good."
He said it's natural for people to automatically assume any support for climate policies could lead to the most radical changes and people concerned about the impacts of climate change should work harder to find common ground with climate skeptics.
"The automatic reaction was, 'Oh, it's a hoax, because ... what your solutions are offering, I don't accept," he said. "And I think what we've been able to do is to say, 'Set all of that aside. Can we agree that we want to leave the Earth better than we found it?' I've never had a single person say no."
Curtis believes the climate movement at large "is too judgmental and too quick to shame."
"I think we take people where they are, and the more people get comfortable talking about this, the less they fear it and the more they become involved in offering solutions," he said.
The congressman on Thursday announced he would host the third annual Conservative Climate Summit on Oct. 4 at Utah Valley University.
