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HELOTES, TexasLast spring, having just retired from Congress, Will Hurd was feeling adrift. He had agreed to write a book, telling his remarkable life story and diagnosing a malfunctioning political system, all while teasing out a run for the presidency in 2024, but Hurd struggled with an underlying anxiety. For the first time in his adult life, the guy whod climbed so quicklyfrom college class president to star CIA operative to lone Black Republican in the Housedidnt know his next move. Finally, Hurd sat down with his nearly 90-year-old father and shared his concerns.

William, I cant give any advice on what you should do, because I dont understand any of these things, Bob Hurd told his youngest son. But I know what you shouldnt do. Dont be desperate. Because when youre desperate, you make bad decisions.

The former congressman tells me this story on the back patio of El Chaparral restaurant, one of his favorite haunts, in suburban San Antonio. Were drinking Ranch Watertequila and lime juice over ice, with a splash of mineral seltzerand comparing notes on his book, American Reboot, which splices together riveting tales that help illuminate his views of a Republican Party thats rotting from the top down. But the book doesnt contain the story about this father-son talk. Rather, the anecdote surfaces organically when I ask Hurd about his brutal indictment of the GOP and how that has changed his relationships with the likes of Kevin McCarthy and Elise Stefanik, party leaders whom he once considered close personal friends.

Some of my friends, some of my former colleagues, they are desperate, Hurd tells me. They are so desperate to hold on to their positions, to hold on to their power, that they make really bad decisions.

Read: Will Hurd picks a side

Those bad decisions are evident when it comes to big, history-forming events, such as the partys enabling of Donald Trumps assault on American democracy. But the bad decisions are also made subtly, in response to smaller episodes every single day, often to accommodate the partys ugliest impulses. (The third chapter of Hurds book, written as an open letter to the Republican Party, is titled Dont Be an Asshole, Racist, Misogynist, or Homophobe.)

The desperationlawmakers catering to the loudest voices in the party baseis not healthy, Hurd says. Its the by-product of safely partisan districts that provide more incentive to light fires than put them out. Its the consequence of the publics collapsing faith in the core institutions of civic society, which invites national politicians to weaponize disputes that should be addressed at the local level. Its the expression of a country in declinea country convinced that its existential concerns are not Chinese sabotage and Russian disinformation, but face masks in public and vaccines for a virus.

Were in a competition. If we dont win it, were going to be a former superpower, Hurd says. We need to treat it as a competitionus versus the world. But we cant, because our politics are so messed up. Were too busy fighting with ourselves.

Hurds book is notable for many reasonshis personal and professional journeys are legitimately compellingbut most of all for its rebuke of Americas proportionality problem. Drawing on his diverse experiences, from chasing down intelligence overseas to parsing classified documents in Congress to working with groundbreaking tech companies today, Hurd argues that we are woefully unprepared for what is coming our way. Quantum computing has the potential to break every form of encryption that guards our money and our secrets. Artificial intelligence could cut the service-based workforce in halfevery two years. Biomedical advances will force questions about the ethics of rewiring our brains and halting the degradation of human cells. In the meantime, China will continue its siege of the American economyswiping our intellectual property, snatching up our real estate, sabotaging our investmentswhile Russia will intensify its decades-old campaign to delegitimize our systems of government and turn Americans against one another.

His subtext is plain enough. To confront these challenges, Hurds colleagues in the Republican Party might need to rethink their fixation on transgender athletes and critical race theory.

Everyone treats everything these days like its some damn emergency. And its got to stop, Hurd says. Were going to be dealing with issues that are so complicated, and so life-altering, that they make the stuff were dealing with right now look like tickle fights.

Hurd proposes a wholesale reorientation of our politicsaway from the dopamine-inducing cultural conflicts of the day, and toward the generational trials that will shape American life in the 21st century. To pull it off, he says, well need both a groundswell of reasonable people reclaiming the political discourse from absolutists and ideologues, and innovative, unifying leadership at the highest levels of government.

Hurd knows that these two conditions are codependent: A leader cant emerge without a movement, and a movement manifests only with the inspiration of a leader. He also knows that some people view him as uniquely qualified to meet this moment: a young, robust, eloquent man of mixed race and complete devotion to country, someone whose life is a testament to nuance and empathy and reconciliation.

What Hurd doesnt know is whether America is ready to buy what hes selling. The nation has been lulled into long-term complacency by elected officials and special interests and media personalities that have short-term motivations. The most engaged voters in his partythe people likeliest to cast ballots in a presidential primaryare, to varying degrees, addicted to the fear and grievances being peddled by people clinging to relevance. Hurd realizes that breaking this addiction wont be easy. In fact, it might prove impossible.

He does, however, see another path forwardone that depends less on persuading those hardened partisans and more on mobilizing a different kind of voter. The overwhelming majority of conservative people in this country, Hurd says, are not watching Fox News every night or imbibing conspiracy theories online. They are not politically neurotic. In fact, they may have never voted in a primary to choose a nominee for presidentand thats the point. They have been busy trying to put food on their table, put a roof over their head, take care of the people they love, he says. But now theyre getting fed up. They are tired of everybody. They are ready for something different.

Like what?

Something normal, Hurd says.

Every politician has an origin story. But Ive never listened to one as tellingand infuriatingas Will Hurds.

In 2008, the young CIA operative was stationed in Afghanistan. He had been an unlikely recruit to the agency; having majored in computer science at Texas A&M, Hurd once dreamed of making a fortune in the tech world. But serendipitous encounters with CIA veterans on the A&M faculty had transformed his curiosities, and several years into the War on Terror, Hurd had emerged as a vital asset in the Middle East. After a bombing near the CIA compound, Hurd was tasked with briefing a group of lawmakers from the House Intelligence Committee, who happened to be visiting Afghanistan. When he began to explain the nature of the local rivalries between Sunni and Shia factions in the region, one of the congressmen interrupted. He asked Hurd what the difference was between a Sunni and a Shia.

Read: Will Hurd could be the canary in the coal mine

Hurd thought it was a joke. He waited for the punch line. But it never came. The congressmans expression made it apparent that he, as well as others in the room, did not understand the basic distinctions at the heart of this war zone. Here were federal lawmakersmembers of the intelligence committeewho could not be bothered to understand the place where they were sending trillions of dollars to fund wars in which young Americans would fight and die.

The episode confirmed Hurds worst suspicions about American politicians: that they were lazy, ignorant, and selfish. (Some of the members of Congress he spoke to that day, he writes in his book, grumbled that the briefing was keeping them from shopping for local rugs.) Hurd was so enraged that he decided to quit the CIA, move home, and run for Congress.

The workhorse reputation Hurd earned on Capitol Hill is best viewed through this prism: the endless weekend drives through the loneliest corners of his district, the obsession with basic constituent services, the determination to gain expertise on every issue before him, the reflex to ignore partisan squabbling and pass legislation on a bipartisan basis. It also explains Hurds impatience with far-right and far-left partisans who hail from safe districts where no meaningful work is required to win reelection every two yearsand who, in between social-media feuds and cable-news speeches, disparage people like him as languid moderates.

The moderates are the ones who behave the same way regardless of whether their party is in power or not. The moderates are critical to crafting and passing legislation that actually gets signed into law. The moderates are the ones who work the hardest, Hurd writes in his book. And we are the ones who get shit done. Extremists do the most bitching and get the least accomplished.

Its true that Hurd has never been driven by any particular ideology. He hired a number of Democrats for key positions in both his D.C. and local officesa practice thats virtually unheard of on Capitol Hilland, when in search of legislative partners, defaulted to looking across the aisle before recruiting fellow Republicans. Once, while we were driving together across a barren stretch of West Texas, I spent an hour pressing Hurd to explain why he considered himself a Republican. He rambled a bit, recalling that his first-ever vote was for Bob Dole (but only because of Doles military service). He talked about Abraham Lincoln freeing the slaves. Then he pivoted to standard fare about too much government impeding human progress. Finally, he shrugged. Look, my hypothesis is that 80 percent of Americans are around the center40 percent left of center, 40 percent right of center, Hurd told me. And theyre all persuadable. The letter next to my name should matter less than my message.

Hurds bookand to an extent, his prospective presidential candidacyshould not be read as an attempt to erase the differences between the two parties. Rather, it is a rejection of their fringes, and of the false choices that frame much of our political debate. Even when it comes to subjects as fraught as abortion or Second Amendment rights or the definitions of human sexuality, Hurd argues that there are broad areas of agreement obscured by the incessant demagoguing of partisans who stand to benefit from sowing narratives of zero-sum division.

Take the issue of immigration. The nadir of Hurds time in Congress came in early 2019, when the federal government shut down for a record-setting 35 days because of a stalemate over which policies to fundand how much money should be spentat the southern border. For 35 days, Hurd watched the leaders of both parties scheming, wrangling their rank-and-file members, figuring out how to emerge victorious from the standoff. Never once in those 35 days did anyone, in either partys leadership, solicit an opinion from Hurda national-security expert, the member who represented more of the U.S.-Mexico border than anyone else in Congress, a guy whos studied the issue inside and out.

Why wouldnt they want Hurds input? Simple. Because they knew he wasnt going to tell them what they wanted to hear. They knew Hurd would offer a set of solutionsthe mass streamlining of legal immigration for both high-skilled workers and low-skilled laborers; the construction of a cutting-edge virtual wall utilizing cameras and fiber-optic cables to monitor illegal crossings; the granting of citizenship to millions of Dreamers; the surge of funding to local agencies dealing with a mass influx of asylum seekersthat would antagonize the loudest voices in both party bases.

So, nothing gets done, Hurd says. Because politicians would rather use it as a bludgeon against each other, as opposed to solving a problem that most Americans, Republicans and Democrats, agree on the solutions to.

The beating heart of Hurds book is a call to Americans to consider the most contentious issues of our times more holistically. Hes not under any illusion that consensus will magically appear. But he does believe that most voterswhat he describes as the 80 percent clustered within range of the middleare tired of being presented with binary choices when it comes to big, complicated questions.

In one passage, Hurd describes his anguish over the murder of George Floyd. It was made that much worse by the reductive scrutiny of his own actions in the volatile aftermath: As the lone Black Republican in the House of Representatives, Hurd felt as though anything he said or didsuch as marching with protesters in Houston, over the objections of his staffwas perceived as picking a side. In his view, there were no sides.

I wanted to show solidarity with Black America. I wanted to explain it was okay to be simultaneously outraged by a Black man being murdered in police custody, thankful that law enforcement puts themselves in harms way to enable our First Amendment rights, and pissed off that criminals are treading on American values by looting and killing police officers, Hurd writes.

These emotions, he concludes, arent mutually exclusive.

None of this means Hurd wants to be a great reconciler of the two parties. Just because he can envision leading a post-partisan movement, does not mean he expectsor hopes forsome cease-fire between Republicans and Democrats. He believes that competition between two healthy parties is essential to a functioning democracy. He just doesnt believe we have two healthy parties.

Hurd makes no secret in the book of his scorn for the ascendant progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Its crusade against oil and natural-gas production, he says, endangers hundreds of thousands of good-paying American jobs and would make the U.S. dependent on some of the worlds worst actors to supply our energy. Its stigmatization of law enforcementcalls to defund the police, or abolish Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, or slash the budget of the U.S. Border Patrolinvites an era of lawlessness and violence and death, particularly along the southern border. These two issues alone, Hurd says, explain why Latino voters are rapidly disaffiliating with the party.

Read: The Texas Republican asking his party to just stop

When I was in Congress, I was the only Republican on the entire U.S.-Mexico border. Now theres the potential that three of the five [Texas] border seats are going to vote Republican. The border district in Arizona is probably going to flip too. Why? Hurd tells me. Because you have Democratic mayors and sheriffs and county judges that are sick and tired of national Democrats talking down to them. For those Latino communities, border security is a public-safety issue. Oh, and by the way, most of those folks on the border know somebody who works in the energy sector. So they feel like Democrats arent just putting them in danger; Democrats are trying to dismantle their way of life.

That said, Hurd saves his harshest commentary for his own party.

Republicans have become comfortable saying or doing anything to win an election, Hurd writes. The party of family values champions cruel policies and hateful politicians while lecturing the left on morality. The party of fiscal discipline and personal responsibility blows holes in the budget, then blames Democrats for their recklessness. The party of empowerment and opportunity systematically attempts to disenfranchise voters who are poor and nonwhite. The party of freedom and liberty keeps flirting with authoritarianism.

Hurds most pressing concern for his party is that its become an agent of disinformation. This is not a uniquely Republican phenomenon, he emphasizesthe book contains a blistering critique of Democrat Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, for leaking faulty information regarding Trump colluding with Russiabut its the Republican Partys embrace of lies and propaganda that most immediately threatens our system of government. Hurd says that watching the January 6 assault on the Capitol, just three days after his retirement from Congress, felt like he was watching a sequel to 9/11extremism infiltrating America in a new form.

It was an example of the kinds of internal threats many of our military leaders have cautioned our political leaders to take as seriously as external threats, Hurd writes. To prevent future manifestations of this threat from materializing, the Republican Party must drive out those who continue to push misinformation, disinformation, and subscribe to crackpot theories like QAnon.

But thats not happening. Just as Hurd was shipping his book to the printer, the Republican National Committee met in Salt Lake City. Its 168 membersthree from each of the 50 states and six territories, elected at the local level by party activistsadopted a resolution censuring the two House Republicans working on the January 6 investigation. The resolution also called the insurrection legitimate political discourse.

Hurd was dumbfounded. He believed that Trump deserved to be impeachednot just for inciting the violence at the Capitol but also for his recorded phone call with the Georgia secretary of state, in which the president asked a top election official to falsify ballots. (Hurd says these circumstances differ from Trumps first impeachment, which he agonized over and ultimately voted against, because there was a clear violation of the law in the run-up to January 6.) Letting Trump off the hook, Hurd says, was bad enough. For the Republican National Committee to gather more than a year after the insurrection and pass a resolution justifying the death and destruction at the U.S. Capitol was a new level of crazyand, to him, proof that the party needs an intervention.

The irony, I tell him, is that these are the peoplethe best-connected local Republican leaderswho will play an outsize role in determining whether an intervention is successful. These are the people who do the most influencing and organizing and favor-trading in their state parties. These are the first hands hell have to shake in Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina if he decides to run for president.

Hurd stares at me blankly. Finally, he arches an eyebrow. Why?

Because, I explain to him, these are the gatekeepers to the presidential process. Even Trump, who ran the most unconventional campaign in modern history, had to kiss some rings and grease some palms.

Hurd is still blank-faced. Thats how things have always been done in the past, he says. But why does it have to be that way?

I ask Hurd what he would propose instead.

Look, theres some people Im not going to appeal tothe right-wingers. Thats okay. But theres more of the other people. The normal people. And Im going to find them, he says. It will be hard. The cost per acquisition of those voters is higher than it is for the traditional Republican primary voteryou know, the people who have voted in the last four primaries. Thats why most people dont bother trying to find them or turn them out.

Wouldnt it be easier, I ask, to just concentrate on wooing those existing likely voters?

Maybe, he says. But if you want to change the party, you need to change the primary electorate. This isnt rocket science. If you want to get back to normal, you need to get more normal people to vote in primaries.

Its a provocative notion. Hurd isnt just hinting at a campaign against Trumpism; hes suggesting an assault on the structural realities of the Republican Party.

Contemplating this sort of insurgency is one thing when the GOP is locked out of power. But come November, Republicans are likelybased on all the available evidenceto rout Democrats in the midterm elections. If that happens, the loudest and most radical elements of the Republican Party will be emboldened, and any incentive to moderate the partys identity will seem lost.

Hurd acknowledges this. But if past is prologue, he says, Republicans will do little with their newly won power in 2023. Congressional leaders will struggle to corral their rambunctious majorities; the party will succeed in frustrating Joe Bidens agenda but fail to provide any governing vision for the country; and by 2024 the country will be forced to choose between two dug-in, do-nothing parties.

At that point, Hurd says, Maybe people will feel like its time to get off this crazy train.

Its possible, Hurd tells me, that such continuing dysfunction will push voters deeper and deeper into their partisan silos. His hope rests on a belief that theyve been pushed too farand that sooner or later, theyll push back.

Look, if youre a left-wing nut or a right-wing nut, youre probably not going to smell what Im cooking, he says. But most people arent nuts. They want to solve problems. They want to make this century an American century. They are normal people who want normal leaders.

Hurd is putting the pieces in place. His friends say he wants to run for president in 2024. He may not have universal name recognition or a behemoth political operation, but he does have a vision. He has a loyal and growing donor base. He has the biography and the charisma and the God-given political chops to put the Republican Partyand the rest of the countryon notice.

People close to Hurd thought he was crazy to abandon a future corner office at the CIA to run for Congress. (Bob Gates, the former defense secretary and CIA director, lobbied furiously to keep Hurd from leaving the agency; then, pitying his former Texas A&M pupil, Gates did something hed never done in his life: He wrote a campaign check.) The young candidate said the same thing to every donor and party official he met: You dont need to think I can win; you just need to think its not crazy. Thats the same approach the 44-year-old bachelor envisions taking in a campaign for national office.

Hurd is the definition of a boom-or-bust candidate. He could go all the way to the White House; he could also go nowhere fast. Everything we know about politics in the Trump era suggests that the second outcome is far likelier than the first. But Hurd says hes not worried about that. Because the only thing worse than being defeated is being desperate.

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Will Hurd 2024: Revenge of the Normal Republicans? - The Atlantic