The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – American Reboot: An Idealist’s Guide to Getting Big Things Done by Will Hurd

Episode Date: April 6, 2022

American Reboot: An Idealist's Guide to Getting Big Things Done by Will Hurd From former Republican Congressman and CIA Officer Will Hurd, a bold political playbook for America rooted in the timeless ideals of bipartisanship, inclusivity, and democratic values. It’s getting harder to get big things done in America. The gears of our democracy have been mucked up by political nonsense. To meet the era-defining challenges of the 21st century, our country needs a reboot. In American Reboot, Hurd, called “the future of the GOP” by Politico, provides a clear-eyed path forward for America grounded by what Hurd calls pragmatic idealism—a concept forged from enduring American values to achieve what is actually achievable. Hurd takes on five seismic problems facing a country in crisis: the Republican Party’s failure to present a principled vision for the future; the lack of honest leadership in Washington, DC; income inequality that threatens the livelihood of millions of Americans; US economic and military dominance that is no longer guaranteed; and how technological change in the next thirty years will make the advancements of the last thirty years look trivial. Hurd has seen these challenges up close. A child of interracial parents in South Texas, Hurd survived the back alleys of dangerous places as a CIA officer. He carried that experience into three terms in Congress, where he was, for a time, the House’s only Black Republican, representing a 71 percent Latino swing district in Texas that runs along 820 miles of US-Mexico border. As a cyber security executive and innovation crusader, Hurd has worked with entrepreneurs on the cutting edge of technology to anticipate the shockwaves of the future. Hurd draws on his remarkable experience to present an inspiring guide for America. He outlines how the Republican party can look like America by appealing to the middle, not the edges. He maps out how leaders should inspire rather than fearmonger. He forges a domestic policy based on the idea that prosperity should be a product of empowering people, not the government. He articulates a foreign policy where our enemies fear us and our friends love us. And lastly, he charts a forceful path forward for America’s technological future. We all know we can do better. It’s time to hit “ctrl alt del” and start the American Reboot.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Boss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrissvossshow.com. I'm sure you thought you were turning into, I don't know, The View or something, but no, you're on The Chris Voss Show. Welcome. Welcome, one and all. As always, you folks know the drill.

We've been doing this for 12 years. Go see all of our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all those crazy places. Go see our large group on LinkedIn. It's 132,000 people, just a few people here and there. Also, subscribe to that LinkedIn newsletter. I think it's killing it over there. It's just hotter than hot. Also, go to YouTube.com, 4ChessChrisVoss.

You can see all the wonderful things we have going on over there and the amazing authors and CEOs and people we've had on the show. And finally, go to goodreads.com 4Chess Chris Voss. You can see my books and all the wonderful authors we have on the show over there as well. Today, we have an amazing gentleman on the show. I don't know, you know, we just put

in the Google machine, amazing gentlemen who are brilliant authors and women too. We should make sure that we're... We put, you know, who are the smartest people on this planet into the Google machine, amazing gentlemen who are brilliant authors and women too. We should make sure that we put, you know, who are the smartest people on this planet into the Google machine and out they come and we schedule appointments with them. Today we have former Congressman Will Hurd on the show with us. He is the author of the newest book that came out March 29, 2022. The name of the book is American Reboot, an idealist's guide to getting big things done. I've been getting a chance to read it, and it's a wonderful read everyone should get into. He is a former congressman, a cybersecurity executive, a CIA author, or I'm sorry, a CIA officer, and an author.

I was just jumping ahead there. He's an author of America Reboot, this new book we'll be talking about today. He's currently the managing director of Allen & Company and a former member of Congress, cybersecurity executive, and undercover officer in the CIA. Welcome to the show, Mr. Hurd. How are you? I'm doing wonderful. It's awesome to be on with you. Awesome sauce, awesome sauce. I was seeing you smile during that intro. We had Dave Navarro, the musician, on a couple weeks ago and he was like, I'm going to be on with you. Awesome sauce. Awesome sauce. I was seeing you smile during that intro. We had Dave Navarro, the musician, on a couple weeks ago, and he was like, did I just enter a WWE thing or something?

What's going on there? Well, I don't want to cause anybody's brain to bleed, okay? I want to expand their horizons and get them thinking about things, but a bleeding brain may not be a good thing. You know, you bring up a good point. I should run that by the attorneys and make sure that we're okay there. We don't want to do anything. So give us your plugs, please, so people can find you on the interwebs and get to know you better.

Yeah, so I'm on all the H-U-R-D, and my website is willbeheard.com. We have a newsletter there where I try to talk and give a different take on the issues of the day. But it's Will Heard, H-U-R-D, and whatever socials you really enjoy. There you go. In fact, I subscribed to your newsletter as well. I'm on there. Thank you. So thanks for putting that out.

So what motivated you to want to write this book? Look, the real story is I got approached by someone in Washington, DC, summer of 2019. So like, have you ever thought about writing a book? And I said, no, I haven't. And then I started thinking about it. I was like, wait, if I did write a book that was nonfiction, what would it be about? And I started with thinking, what are those things that I tried to talk about when I was in Congress? And so this notion that I believe there's five generational defining challenges that the country is faced with that needs to be addressed. And so when I said, okay, there's those five things I always talk about, then I was like, how did my opinions on those issues form?

And when I looked at all of them, there was five, six, seven specific events that have happened in my career, whether it was when I was recruiting spies and stealing secrets for the CIA or breaking into banks and stealing their money and show them how I did it when I was in the cybersecurity business or when I was walking the halls of Congress. And so that's why all the chapters and all the stories are based on those experiences that led me to that conclusion. I try to take the reader on that journey. So when I had that kind of idea, it was like, okay, let's just start writing it. And look, I love my country. I've been fortunate to serve. Chris, I know you know about that.

And I want to make sure we say the number one country on the planet. And that's not a fait accompli. And so for me to be able to talk about what we need to do, I tell the story when I was in the CIA, the lesson you learn about get off the X, we got to do things differently. And ultimately, that's why I wrote the book. There you go. So give us an arcing overview, like kind of a 30,000-foot view that people would be like, what's in this thing?

Sure. So look, 72% of Americans think the country's on the wrong track. And and only 72. Yeah. Look, there's some optimists and there's some optimists. Right. And that trend. Yeah. That trend has been growing for for some time. And and this is a kind of a guide and a memoir to say how we get on a different track. And I talk about how the Republican Party needs to evolve and start looking like America. I talk about how we need national leaders that are more interested in inspiring rather than fear mongering. I talk about how we need domestic policy that is based on empowering people, not empowering the government. And I talk about a foreign policy

that requires us to have our friends love us and our enemies to fear us. And then I talk about technology, how we need to take advantage of technology before it takes advantage of us. Those are kind of like the five big sections. And I break down each section into a number of chapters to talk about what does that actually mean. And ultimately, it's also it's an insider's account of how some things happen and how things get done in Congress. I tell a bunch of CIA stories about what it was like being a case officer. And then I give some perspective on what I've learned when I was in business. There you go.

The CIA stories, you kind of launched the book talking about some of the lessons you learned being at the CIA. And, of course, it's quite the interesting business to be in. And you learn so much about, you know, like you talk about some of the different key words, key lessons, key things that they teach you that you have to use in the theater to work the trade of spycraft,

but also to stay alive. Look, 100%. And it was an amazing job, a job I never thought I was going to get into, right? I went to Texas A&M University. I got a degree in computer science. I thought I was going to be a coder, right? And I had never really been outside of Texas and it's my freshman year in college. I'm walking across campus and I see a sign that said, take two journalism classes in Mexico city for $425. And I had 450 bucks in my bank account. So I go to Mexico, fell in love being in another culture. I thought it was cool seeing things I only read about in books. And I decided on international studies as a minor. And I had this former CIA officer who told these

amazing stories as a guest lecturer. And it was like, I want to do that. And the experience it gave me, it made me appreciate some of these things that we take for granted here at home. I remember in that first class I took in international studies, the first lesson was on the rule of law. And my 18-year-old self was like, the rule of law? Of course there's rule of law. This is dumb. Like why a whole section talking about rule of law? Like what the heck, man? Of course there's rule of law. And I didn't realize how important that was until I lived in places that didn't have rule of law, right? And so just being in cultures that very different from my own, it made me realize how awesome and how lucky and how fortunate we are to live here. And then also, I learned a lot about human behavior. When you're recruiting

spies and stealing secrets, it requires you to understand other people and understand people's motivations. And so that was something. And then when you talk about collecting intelligence, the thing I learned in the CIA, in order to understand the truth, you got to talk to a whole lot of people. And where that overlap is, that's as close as you're going to get to the truth as you can possibly get, right? And so using that skillset when it came times to evaluating a bunch of competing opinions in Congress was really valuable. And it was an awesome time. And to be able to share some of that perspective and some of the stories. And a lot of times when I made mistakes, right, it was glad. And I got it all approved by the CIA. So I won't have to kill anybody for reading those stories. Well, I won't have to worry about it then. So the book is a great book. It's almost like you sat down and you laid out what politics should be, the most optimal, perfect scenario of what really government should do for its people.

You cite the Constitution and what its vision was attempting to be. And it seems like you do that. You sit down and you don't only take the Republican Party to task, but you sit all politics. And you say this is kind of the perfect utopia of what politics should be in my opinion i don't you tell me from no look i i appreciate that because that's what i tried to do and look the way i describe my philosophy it's pragmatic idealism and and idealism is based on how do we help the greatest number of people possible based on the realities of where we are today? So you have to understand where you are today in order to figure out, and then you got to

understand what's your vision, right? Like I learned in college from some consultant vision process structure. You got to start with where are you trying to go? And so that's what I tried to outline in the book is, where do we need to go in order to address these generational defining challenges to make sure this century continues to be the American century? And then how do we get there based on where we are right now? And so, because look, what I'm talking about and what I outlined is hard. You know, some of my criticisms have been, this is too rosy of a picture. No, it's, it's, it's based in realism and it's not easy. If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. Every country would be doing it. And so, so, so that's what I tried to do. And so, and so you're right

on with, and this is the way we can say, hey, there's a different way. Saying the country is on the wrong track is only the first step. What's the right track? What track do we want to go on to? And then how do we get to that track? And that's where I try to give some opinions and perspective based on my time in dangerous places, calls of Congress and board rooms of businesses. Well, you talked in the CIA, you learn how to get as close as you can to the truth. And I get the sense from talking to you and also in the book that that's really important

to you, that pragmatic idealism to do the best for everyone. And that actually makes more sense now when I read the book. You talk in the book about making sure that your audio meets your video. Tell us a little bit about that if you would. Sure. My first chief of staff was one of my best friends and he ruined my life by suggesting I run for Congress. So I ruined his by making him my first chief of staff. And he used to always say, he goes, the frustration that the public has with elected officials is oftentimes when their audio and their video doesn't matter, where your words don't reflect what you actually do. Right? So you do as your video, your words as your audio. And what I always try to do was be ideologically consistent.

I got 21 pieces of legislation signing the law in six years. That's a lot. It's more than what most people do in a couple of decades. And I did that. I'm a Republican. I did that under a Republican president and a Democratic president. I did that under a Republican Speaker of the House and a Democratic Speaker of the House. And so I tried to behave the same way, regardless of whether the people in power were wearing my jersey or not. And so the thing that I benefited from representing a 50-50 district. So the district I represented in Texas was 29 counties, two time zones, 820 miles of the border. It took 10 and a half hours to drive from one corner of the district to the other at 80 miles an hour,

which was the speed limit in most of the district. But I found out the harder way it wasn't the speed limit in all of the districts. And it was larger. It's basically the size of the state of Georgia. And it was 50-50, meaning there was 50% Republicans, 50% Democrats. And it was a seat that went back and forth every cycle until I was able to hold it for three years in a row, three terms in a row. And what I learned in a 50-50 district, no matter what you do, half the district's pissed off with you. And so that required you. That required you to explain what you were doing and why you were

doing it. And so as people understood that, and I would always tell folks, do you agree with your spouse 100% of the time? Do you agree with your best friend 100% of the time? Of course the answer is no, right? So why are you expecting to agree with your mayor or city council or congressman 100% of the time? And people actually don't expect that. But they want to know what you're doing and why you're doing it. And so to me, the best way to encapsulate what you should be doing is your audio and your video must match. And I think you put your finger on the real disconnect that people see with politicians. As I read your book and other things, I'm a strategist.

I mean, that's what I do in business. And so I'm like, okay, how can you apply this? How do you pull back some of these things? It's interesting that we accept that politicians lie to us and we let it slide. But yet and politicians know they can lie to us and many will lie to us because they're like, well, they expect us to lie to them. And it's this weird circular bag that goes nowhere. And so as I was reading, you know, what you put forth is something. How do we drag back to these ideals or how do we, you know, and I imagine we just need more people like yourself who want to stand up and say, there's always a better way.

I mean, this is what I learned in all my companies. There's always a better way. No matter, even if you build a better way, there's a better way than the better way. And so, yeah, I looked at it and I went, God, how do you revolutionize this? How do we adopt it? There's a couple of ways, actually. And I really appreciate the question and the fact that you're thinking about that. And before I explain, another story that I was exposed to, I forget what year it was.

And I think I tell this story in the book. I'm on a panel of a bunch of YouTube sensations. The other four people on the panel had a billion subscribers to YouTube combined. I think at that point I had like 65. Okay. So I'm like, why am I on this panel? It's like, okay, whatever. I'm here. And one of the people on the panel was the digital director for The Rock, Dwayne Johnson. And this was right when the movie Moana was coming out. And she said, she goes, if Moana fails at the box office, are we going to blame moviegoers for not going to the movie? Or are we going to say Moana is a crummy movie? You obviously say Moana is a crummy movie.

Now, I'm not saying Moana is a crummy movie, by the way. I think it's a quite delightful movie, and it was a success at the box office. But her point was, only in politics do you blame voters for not coming out instead of saying the electors or the people that are wanting to get elected are putting out a crappy product. And look, my home state of Texas, we just went through a primary on March 1st. Three million people voted. That's Republicans and Democrats out of 30. That's a lot of voter apathy.

And part of the reason, in my opinion, is that people that are running for office are not putting forward something that the public are not smelling what they're cooking. And so it starts with the opportunity for people that are running for office to provide something and do something and talk about things that people actually care about. That's point one. Point two is we need people that show up. We need more people voting in primaries. It's that simple. Anywhere between two and six percent of the people decide most of these seats because the seat is decided in a primary. Yeah, a lot. That's not a lot of people. And so so those are the two opportunities. And the professional political class, people that run races, pollsters, digital vendors, all that stuff, they say to talk to likely primary voters.

Everybody talks to the same people every single cycle, which means you get the same results. And so the opportunity – it's hard what I'm talking about doing. It's hard. But also as individuals, we need to model the behavior we want to see. I doubt many of your listeners have ever clicked on an article that said Congress worked. Hooray. That's true. Right? Wait, are there articles? Like somebody threw a chair, right? Or there was some drama. And so we need to be modeling the behavior that we want to see. And I think we do those things.

And again, it sounds simple. They're hard to actually do. If we do that, we're going to start seeing the kind of discourse that needs to happen. Because why does all this matter? This matters because if we want to continue to be able to put food on a table, a roof over our head, and make sure the people we love be healthy, happy, and safe, we got to have serious competition of ideas about these challenges that we're facing and not just be throwing, having a political food fight on every topic. Yeah. I was reading something recently about, I think it was in Axios, and it talked about how, hey, you know, there's only a small group of American people that are on Twitter being toxic. Most people don't even tweet. I think it was like 71% of Americans don't even tweet or aren't even on Twitter probably. And you start realizing, you know, where people

are at in the base, you know? So the one of the things you do talk in the, in the book about is technology. We, we talked a little bit about Alan Compey before the show. Is Congress, you know, let's talk about what you talk about in the book for technology and then is Congress really prepared? I mean, the future wars are going to be PC wars or, you know, all this sort of stuff we're going on with the internet. Short answer is Congress prepared to regulate and deal with these kinds of issues? Absolutely not. Are our agencies prepared to introduce the kinds of technologies we need in order to defend against the technologies that could be used against us?

Not at the pace that it should. As a society, are we prepared for jobs that don't exist today? No. And this is not just about the United States achieving our best self. We are in a competition. And to me, we talk a lot about being in a new Cold War with the Russians, especially with what's happening in Ukraine. But the new Cold War that we're actually in is with the chinese government and the reason is the chinese government has made it very clear that they are trying to surpass the united states

of america as the global superpower and they're going to do that by being a leader in a number of advanced technologies things like 5g ai artificial intelligence, quantum computing, hypersonics, space. There's about 12 or 14 of these industries. Now, the US and China can coexist at the same time. That's the perfect world. I will put my money on entrepreneurship, creativity, freedom any day of the week over authoritarianism, right? And so the two countries, we can't coexist in the same world, but we must operate and compete by agreeing on the rules. And if China has agreed to be part of the World Trade Organization,

then guess what? You can't be selling people's technology and using it on your own. You can't be manipulating currencies. There's so many things. And so part of this, and you're right, the future of conflict is going to be in cyberspace. Cyberspace is a domain of conflict

just like air, land, sea, and space. And I know a lot of folks have been watching and we thought that the Russians would have been doing more in cyberspace when it comes to their invasion in Ukraine. One of the reasons we haven't seen some of that is one, we were prepared. Back to December, the US government and our allies were warning governmental entities and banks and hospitals be prepared make sure you're you're hardening your digital defenses and then also the war is going so bad for the russians that they haven't been able to focus some of their time and intention on some of these on some of these cyber wars but can we operate if our phones go off, if the Chinese government is able to jam our phones,

will we be able to operate? One of the scarier moments, I think, from a cyber attack recently, I think it was last summer in Florida, there was a water treatment plant where a cyber hack increased the amount of, I think it was lye in the water, to poison the water. Now, imagine if the hacker knew what that system was that were alerting people to that dangerous level and turned it off. Then you would have had a number of people killed from poisoning of water. Wow. These are the realities that we have to be prepared for. And there are some people in Congress that don't use email and are like, you know, is this thing on?

Like, how do you get this, you know, how do you get this thing in this box? You know, and that's unfortunate. If I move over here, does Google still know where I'm at? Whatever that was. It was always funny. Yeah, it's unfortunate. If I move over here, does Google still know where I'm at? Whatever that was. It was always funny. Yeah, it's scary. I mean, I was trying to find the quote here. There's somebody who said, you know, the future of war is going to be AI and Russia and China know it.

And whoever wins the war on AI. And really, you know, what we've been talking about here and what a lot of people have to realize is the the the the thing that's built the american empire is that competition like you say of ideas it's having the best ideas but also merged with the spirit of of the highest human i spirit of ideal is i'm not getting to where i'm trying to go here but but the the human spirit bringing out the best, having that inspired instead of being contained or imprisoned or squashed where you can be the best person you can be. You can have the freedoms that you have. And a lot of people take that for granted.

I think some of that is to blame their education, taking away civics. You know, I didn't understand how important the Constitution was. I was born here and was like, yeah, whatever it is. We got the freedom stuff, you know, like like you mentioned earlier where you grow up in this country and you don't really understand that hey there's some parts of this world that are very different and and sometimes you just walk around with that american exceptionalism where you're like we're the greatest country in the world but you don't really realize what built that and and then when you start finding out how important some of these, some of these institutions

and really what the foundation of that is, the constitution, it makes all the difference in the world. You know, you write in your book about the interesting experience, the unique experience that you had in Congress. You know, I used to watch you in Congress and watch what you do. And I'd be like, that's gotta be a tough place to be because I would hear you speaking your truth and, and, and, and trying to go through it. But, you know, you're dealing with Donald Trump, his whole level of experience.

And you're pretty unique as a minority in the party. Is that party brought any other minorities into it since you left? Well, yeah. So, look, I was the only black Republican in the House. Now I believe there's currently two. There's probably going to be three after this next election cycle. A number of Latino and Latina members of Congress. And so the party is actually diversifying, and we're growing in other parts of the country.

Look, in South Texas, south and west Texas, where I'm from, the crisis at the border is really significant. And when you live on the border, the border crisis is actually a public safety issue. And that's going to see a number of Latinos voting Republican for the first time. But the opportunity for us as the Republican Party is to grow the base, right? Like one of the problems that we've had in this country for the last 30 years is neither party is trying to grow their coalition. They're just trying to drive out the existing folks to the greatest number possible. And so you see all these swings every two years and nothing of any significance is able

to get done. And that's part of the problem. So the opportunity we have, and I think education is one of it. You talked about education. In Texas, we have school choice, right? And so there's been a 20-year longitudinal study done in Texas talking about how the achievement gap within black and brown communities when kids go to a charter school is eliminated. It's like, this is probably like one of the most significant things to happen in education, and we don't talk about it enough. This is something that we should be driving because ultimately we have income inequality in this country because we have education inequality. We're able to address that. So that's a long way to say it's improving. We got a long way to go, right? Because there's two people that are seen as opposite of what I'm

talking about. And as you said, your point about AI, it was actually Vladimir Putin who said that quote. Oh, yeah. He said, whoever masters AI is going to master the world. That was it. And that's probably the only thing he and I agree on. And when you start thinking about how AI can level the playing field, but it also can further ingrain some of the problems that we have around equality, around access to resources. And we need people that understand civics and philosophy and to think about what the role of technology should be in our society.

Most definitely. Most definitely. Most definitely. You know, in your book, you lay out this whole utopia. And you were an insider. And so I have a theory. This is my theory. And I'm a person who can go both ways. I've both been a Republican.

I'm a moderate Democrat. I have problems with the left-wing crazy part of my party, and I'm very critical of them. And honestly, I've followed Donald Trump since 1986. If he would have come across as Democrat, I would have voted for him on the Republican side. I just knew the man. And so I try and vote for what's best for this country.

I do stick usually to moderate Democrat because I kind of have to these days. But I would vote for what's best for this country i do stick usually to moderate the democrat because i kind of have to these days but but i i would vote for whatever but they're the one thing we've learned over time especially on january 6th seeing the confederate flag in the rotunda or whatever in the in that great house the that we haven't resolved the civil war And this country is built on 450 years of really racial problems and white power. And it's mixed with white religion, white nationalist religion, or white religion, all of it. Even Putin can't do what he does without the church there in Russia support. And we have 450 years of this being in our DNA, being a huge problem. It's something we've never resolved. I mean, James Baldwin, you can take whatever James Baldwin said and

print in today's paper, and it's still true 60, 70 years later. And so in looking at, you know, in 2050, I believe it is, and I think you also cite this in your book, there's going to be a flipping of from white power, people that are in the majority, to people who are in a minority ruling this country. And I've seen voters, especially Republican voters, say we're really concerned that they're not going to be as nice to us as we were to them for 450 years. And there's a real fear there. And to me, that's kind of what this two-party system has turned into. We have Republicans on one side, and this is a theory, so feel free to throw anything at me, but it seems like we've embraced

this with the Republican Party that it's about retaining that power as long as possible. And then the Democrats have kind of gone, okay, well, women are going to rise, minorities are going to rise. We just got to accept it, run with it. Now, I'm not saying, I'm not condoning any of our left-wing stuff. We're not perfect either. But does that need to be resolved? You're an insider. I'm an outsider. Is that really a good...

Am I painting the picture right or am I just... So here's how I would articulate it. So there are, there have been elements of... it's the old elements of the Democratic Party that created Jim Crow following Reconstruction that broke away from the Democratic Party, the Dixiecrats that joined up with Republicans know, with Republicans in order to win elections. And I get into some of this history. I get into some of this history in the book.

And so there have been elements of, you know, racist folks within the Republican Party. There's no question. But it's not the majority. And it's not the voters. Right. It's not. And so my dad's black, my mom's white. They met in LA, moved to San Antonio in 1971.

The house my parents have lived in for 50 years is the only house, the only neighborhood that would sell to an interracial couple in the 70s, right? So that limited my brother, my sister, and I from the schools we were able to go to, right? Now, I still was okay. I succeeded. I was successful, all that kind of stuff. But those things have ramifications and impacts.

The problem also now, I think, within the Democratic Party is they have taken for granted that black and brown communities have historically voted Democrat and are not following through on things that didn't help the community. And this is where I go back to education. Look, you go to any majority black city in America, they want to know how are you going to make it easier to start new jobs, to start businesses, to hire employees, to have the services you need. Everybody's worrying about education. And so we have a chance in order to talk to folks on that. And look, we have to recognize a former president of a historically black college and university. I'm drawing a blank right now on her name.

But once said, we've eliminated racism from our laws. But we haven't eliminated it from our hearts and our minds. And so this is something that we still have to rectify and deal with and understand this history of our country and make sure, and part of it is to understand it so that we don't repeat it, right? And that we accept it, right? So like all this stuff, it's okay to talk about all these terrible things that have happened because we have to recognize the capacity of human behavior, right? And so I still believe – and I'll end my answer with this.

The shit my dad had to put up with, pardon my language, is nowhere near the stuff I had to deal with. And the stuff my nieces, you know, I have two sets of nieces, one set 26, one set that are six. The things that they're dealing with is very different than what I had to deal with growing up. So we're seeing improvement. We're seeing change. We got a ways to go and we can't forget that and take our eye off the ball. There you go. Because I'm watching the Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmations and they voted along their party

lines with the thing. And I'm like, and I assume, I mean assume that's appealing to the voter base that they have. Or maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. So I would say on that, what's interesting there is I think it's the judicial philosophy that's more of the problem. But here's what's fascinating. She was the second most popular Supreme Court justice ever nominated. That's the news story that – and a lot of left-leaning media, which I thought fascinating, is they wanted to talk about knuckleheaded congressmen asking crazy questions. That ain't news. Of course they're going to do that, right?

The news is, the news was how historic of occasion it was and how popular it was amongst the electorate. That was actually the news story, in my opinion, and I think a lot of people buried that lead. I think you're right. I mean, they don't feature people like you who go, oh, well, we'll pass these bills. And a lot of people, I go through Congress, and I don't think do much. I think there's some Florida people that I can cite.

But I'm not going to tell any underage jokes. But if it leads, it bleeds, right? So, you know, it's always, you know, we're always seeing my extreme left or your extreme right on the news and everybody goes, well, that's the thing. But, you know, I've often, when I was reading your book, I was wondering that because you talk a lot about that in your book. When you left Congress, you know, your reasons are your own for leaving Congress, but, you know but they cited some of your issues with some of the things that Donald Trump was saying about race, about people that were in the Democratic Party and stuff like that. At least that's what's cited in the stuff. And so I'm almost wondering if we have to resolve that before we can overlay the utopian idea that you've put forth.

Sure. It's always funny. I'm kind of like, what you see is what you get right like this is you know everybody always think there's a different answer right no the answer is the answer and look donald trump had no impact on my how i did what i did or did and and i would say yes he is he is the manifestation of what I would call an authoritarian wing of the Republican Party. And I think that is a wing that is not going to help us solve these generational defining challenges that I talk about. The reason I laugh, Congress, is those jobs were not designed to be in forever. And so I would always get criticized. I said I wasn't for term limits, because if you don't

like somebody, vote them out. And the same people that criticized me for that criticized me for leaving. And it's just like, wait a minute. I left. I wasn't in there forever. And also, it's always better to have a fresh perspective, fresh experiences. I always tell people, if my experiences since being out of the CIA, I wish I would have had some of those when I was in the CIA, because I probably would have done things a little bit differently. All right. And so, so again, I just don't think those, those positions were designed to be in forever. Maybe, and maybe we need to, you know, there's, there's a lot of other issues that I was thinking about with your book too, where I was like, you know, maybe, maybe a house, you know,

one of the, they say one of the challenges with the people who run the house is you only have two years. And so you barely get in there and then you've got to start running for re-election again. And maybe we need stuff. We had Tom Hartman, the radio host on the show, about three or four times now for his books. He talked about several different SCOTUS decisions that have been made about being able to buy a politician by the richest people and corporations in this country and making it so easy. There's a lot of different PACs that influence this with the Republican Party. You know, you have the Center for National Policy, the Betsy DeVos thing.

And of course, that's a whole different agenda. You have the Federalist Society and all those different things. Do we need to maybe take the money out of politics? Is that part of maybe utopia for your design or take away some of these other things that seem to really have issues or cause issues or do they cause issues? So I think my dad was a traveling salesman. He sold notions, right, which is buttons, zippers, threads. And him and my, when he retired from that, him and my mom opened a beauty supply business where they sold shampoo, conditioners, and relaxers to salons. And then I was a government employee. And so I was independently wealthy.

And so my ability to raise money is what allowed me to beat a guy who was a self-funder. He was a millionaire, and he was able to, he funded most of his campaign with his own money. So I had an ability to operate that way. Now, many of these super PACs, I've not seen many situations where a super PAC gets in and the opposing super PAC doesn't get in, right? So you have all this money, and basically they cancel each other out. And the only people that benefit is the professional political class that run these entities and the places where you place ads, whether that's digital ads or TV ads. They're the ones that benefit from the volume of information. Now, how you fix that, how you get that in a way where I'm still able to be an upstart insurgent campaign and go against someone who may have their own resources.

That's what we have to do. And look, a situation where my campaign, like my general consultant is a multimillionaire, but some of my staffers on the official side that is working on behalf of the people have a difficult time buying a house in Washington, D.C. That's a problem. That's a problem with the system.

Definitely. Definitely. You know, I think the way the people who wrote the Constitution designed it was they wanted more average people to go circulate in and out of Congress and, and it'd be representative of the people, you know, you're writing your book. That's why I've been having this discussion with you that the Republican party needs to look more like America. And of course, as you mentioned, the democratic party needs to try and take care of their end, you know, and appeal to everybody. And, you know, I really wish 50% of this, this country would vote and care and really, you know, give a damn about the constitution. I don't know, you know, they can vote any way they want, but that would be the most beautiful part.

I even would love a law where it says you, you have to vote. What, what on your book have we touched on? Cause we're getting the roundabout of the hour and, and I want to make sure we get everybody in to teach you by your book. No, look, I look, I think we hit all the topics and I appreciate the time, but, but you're, you're, you know, you talk when, when I love hearing you talk about the constitution and how important that is, right? Like we always talk

about this experiment called America, right? Why do we call it an experiment? We call it an, we call it an experiment because it was the only one at the time when it was created. And everybody else in the world thought it was going to fail. The next democracy was not created until 60 years later, and that was Switzerland. There are only 14 countries that have celebrated being a democracy for more than 100 years. And so this notion that a democratic society is a given is not true. And we take some of these things for granted because this is the only thing that we have ever known. And that is the danger in saying, you know, U.S. economic and military dominance is no longer guaranteed. We have become an exceptional nation, not because of what we have taken, but because of what we have given. And that started because we gave a helping hand after World War II to help rebuild Europe, right, and recognize a strong Europe was important for the rest of the world. And so these

are the things that have made us great, right? And what I'm proposing in American Reboot is not changing those things. It's hitting reset to get back to that operating system that is based on these principles and theories that have for 247 years made us one of the most successful country on this planet. And so that's why I try to put some of these ideas forward because it requires a competition. And I want two strong parties to have these debates. And whether you're a Republican or Democrat or independent or don't vote, I think there's something in this for everyone. Yeah. And I think people need to realize two parties or maybe more in the future, I don't know. Some of the countries that have a lot of parties seem to get really kind of off the rails. I don't know, but maybe it's better. What do I know? But we need a healthy party. I mean, I was in the GOP

up until George Bush Jr., or I'm sorry, the presidency of Dick Chene party. I mean, I was in the GOP up until George Bush Jr. Or I'm sorry, the presidency of Dick Cheney. I'm just telling jokes here. But, you know, I played both sides. And I would still to this day vote for both sides because I want what's best for this country. I want that Constitution protected. And I've learned how more important it was after January 6th and everything else. But, yeah, you're right. People need to not

take this for granted. Do you think, I mean, it seems like we're really on the dark arc if you study fascism, you know, Pinochet, Duterte, Cuba, who am I thinking of, Germany and Italy, Mussolini and stuff. It seems like we're really on a dark arc towards authoritarianism or socialism, if you want to call it that too. And, you know, the Constitution seems to be under attack. Do you think that, you know, we have a chance to pull this back from the precipice? Or am I smoking? Am I wrong by thinking we're in a dark place? I think you're absolutely right to be concerned.

The concentration of power in the hands of the few is a bad thing and it always has been. And the far left wants to concentrate the power in an entity and the far right wants to concentrate it in a individual. And both of these are equally bad. And yes, we should be concerned about these events. We should obviously be concerned about January 6th. Look, I spent a lot of time in the book explaining that. I've been very clear in my opinions there. But I also, and look, are things going to get worse before they get better? Probably.

But I actually believe that our best days are still ahead of us. Because I see people like you that, look, they want what's best for their families. They're willing to entertain and to listen to different ideas. They're open to a conversation and a debate. That is 80% of the country. We just happen to focus on people that only are on Twitter and cable news, and that's like 14% of the country. And so I actually am optimistic that we're going to be able to get through these times and get to a point where we're not as afraid of the system degrading.

You know, I have a saying, I can't remember off the top of my head, but the saddest part of what we do as a humanity is we learn from the darkest parts of our experience instead of the brightest parts of our experience many times. You know, we saw how Hungary with Viktor Orban fell into full autocracy in 2020, I think it was. With the COVID crisis, he was able to take that. Hopefully, the lesson that we learn from what's going on in Ukraine in the horrors and tragedy of it all, I mean, he's embracing Putin, is that democracy can fall very quickly. We can lose this great, beautiful experiment.

As Ben Franklin said, as long as you can keep it. And hopefully we're learning from the experience in Ukraine and what Putin is doing that supporting authoritarianism, supporting these dictators. The Russians basically, in my opinion, they traded prosperity, wealth, and money, and jobs and said, hey, this is good. Well, we'll put up with the authoritarian guy. And we came really close to that here in this country. In fact, I think we came within a decision of a vice president and two people in the Justice Department, to my understanding, between whether or not we live in an authoritarian rule. And so I think hopefully what people are waking up to with the war in Ukraine. And like I say, it's a horror show that

we have to hit this bottom to go, maybe authoritarians aren't that great. But hopefully we learn from this and go, yeah, we need to, we need to, you know, it's like we get reminded what every 70 or a hundred years, the saying, I always say, the one thing man can learn from his history is that man never learns from his history. And this is why we go round and round. So hopefully we get there from, from what we're learning in this experience and we get pulled back from the brink. Because, yeah, democracy is you write in your book. And I love the ideas you put in your book.

And I want a healthy two-party system. And maybe the news needs to change. Maybe we need to focus people on more like you who stick out like a sore thumb because they go there, they do their job, they walk their talk, the audio-video matches and everything else. So I really appreciate you coming on the show with us today, Will, and sharing your insight and your wonderful book because I think it's a better vision for America. Look, I appreciate you and the questions. This is what makes me happy because I meet people like you, and I think you're reflective of probably the majority of Americans. And so I appreciate the time and the conversation and you caring to have these kinds of conversations as well. So thank you.

Yeah, and there's a great story people should reference in your book about Beto O'Rourke and that drive you guys did across the country and how much you guys learned about each other. And I think that's great. And what's cool is how much people were excited about politicians coming together. People want us to disagree without being disagreeable. Yeah. And that's possible. Yeah. The competition of ideas.

That's what this country was built on. Will, give us your.com so people can find you on the internet. My website is willbeheard, H-U-R-D,.com. It's willbeheard. And then on all socials, I'm just willheard. There you go. There you go. Guys, order up the book.

It just came out March 29th, 2022. You can be one of the first on your book club to see it. You read it. I really encourage you to read it. American Reboot, An Idealist's Guide to Getting Big Things Done. And you definitely want to check it out. It's a number one bestseller right now in general elections and political process, according to Amazon. So that's it.

Thanks to my audience for tuning in. Go to youtube.com, 4chesschrisvoss. Hit that bell notification button. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisvoss. See everything we're reading and reviewing in there. All of our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, wherever those crazy kids are playing on the interwebs nowadays. Stay safe. Be good to each other.

And we'll see you guys next time.