If you’ve been listening to this show for the past few months, maybe even since the 2022 midterms, you probably think I sound like something of a broken record when it comes to my advice for politicians today. Again and again, I’ve said the following: elections right now are Republicans’ to lose. Biden’s approval numbers are low—41.2 percent-—which is lower than every president at this stage of their term in the last 75 years, other than Jimmy Carter.
It seems to me that all Republicans need to do is stand still and be normal, and they’d win. (Instead, the GOP often seems more focused on Bud Light and books about gay penguins with two moms.)
So when former Texas congressman Will Hurd announced he was running for president last month, I thought, at long last, a normal Republican candidate. And not just that—one with an impeccable pedigree and reputation. A Republican who has never bent the knee to Trump. A Republican who is sensible, sober, and highly respected for his bipartisanship. The kind of textbook candidate that will set your heart aflutter if you count yourself among the legions of the sane and moderate.
So. . . why is Hurd polling in last place? Has my advice over the last few months been misguided? Is the Republican Party just too far gone, too changed at this point for someone as normal as Will Hurd? On today’s episode, I ask him.
Hurd spent nearly a decade as an undercover operative for the CIA in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, during the height of the war on terror. In 2010, he left the agency to start his political career and in 2014, he was elected to Congress, becoming the only black Republican on the House floor. For three consecutive terms, Hurd represented one of Texas’s most sprawling districts, a district that is two-thirds Latino and covers much of the border with Mexico, from San Antonio to El Paso.
In a profile of Hurd in The Atlantic last year, appropriately titled “Revenge of the Normal Republicans,” the reporter Tim Alberta wrote this: Will Hurd knows that “a leader can’t 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 doesn’t know is whether America is ready to buy what he’s selling.”
So which is it: Are Americans ready to buy what Hurd is selling? Or has that ship simply sailed?
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I'm one of those listeners who had never heard of Hurd. And I am impressed. He still hasn't won me over, and like several who have commented here before me, the CIA resume is a default turn-off. Still, I can give him the benefit of the doubt as a young man wanting to serve his country at the turn of the millennium, and the way he reflects back on that experience largely eases my discomfort. Of all the candidates you have interviewed to date, I think Hurd and Haley have distinguished themselves as the sharpest. I indeed would be very tempted by a Haley-Hurd ticket.
I like that Hurd is a strong, unapologetic interventionist in terms of American foreign policy, as unfashionable as that has become on both sides of the political aisle. Regardless of the major flaws of the preceding two decades, abandoning Afghanistan when we did was a grave strategic error, as well as a tactical disaster.
Bari, you are one of our best political interviewers today, and this was another top-shelf discussion. One question I wished you had asked, though, was this: what makes Hurd a conservative? You asked him about being a Republican, but I find the alternative question more interesting. He invoked his conservative identity repeatedly, yet he sounded more like a neo-conservative to me, which I long have seen as a very un-conservative mindset. When asked to steel-man opposition against bold U.S. support for Ukraine, for example, his answer was that opponents are worried about the monetary cost. For me at least, that's not my concern with U.S. support for Ukraine. Instead, my main worry about Ukraine is that it is a war we cannot win--especially not in the total-victory way that Hurd envisions. As much as I'd like to see Team Putin wiped off the map, I don't think that is as possible--or as geopolitically necessary--as Hurd seems to believe. While we live in a disturbing age of gerontocracy, there is a hubris of youth about Hurd that makes me a little nervous.
Still, godspeed to his candidacy. His is a very welcome alternative voice, and I will be paying close attention to him in the months ahead.
No such thing as ex-CIA. No thank you I’ll pass on this one