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Ben, We Hardly Knew Ye
I remember the first time I met Ben Sasse, sitting and chatting next to him at a GOP fundraising breakfast in Virginia in June 2014. My former boss, retiring US Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), introduced us. “He’s the real deal,” Kyl said. Coming from the highly respected Assistant GOP Leader, that meant something. I’ve long held Kyl in high regard as one of the most effective and intelligent Senators I’ve worked with.
The Harvard and St. John’s educated Sasse was the favorite of National Review magazine among US Senate candidates that fall, winning a cover photo. Then-42 years old, the bright, brash young conservative was seen as a potential presidential candidate.
The Ph.D. historian (Yale University) and, in his 30s, a successful college President (he turned around Midland University in Nebraska) immediately impressed. He homeschooled his children and wrote about their education, including detasseling corn. “Ben is focused on the future of work, the future of war, and the First Amendment,” his official website states. “He worries that the Senate lacks urgency about cyber and about the nation’s generational debt crisis. An opponent of perpetual incumbency, he has no intention of spending his life in the Senate.”
Sasse published two terrific books during his first term in the Senate: The Vanishing American Adult, about our new generation’s “coming of age” crisis, and Them: Why We Hate Each Other and How to Heal. I read and recommend them both as insightful, history-based, practical books devoid of the politics and partisanship featured in most other books authored by US Senators (exception: books by Sasse’s friend, Sen. Mike Lee).
But not long after Sasse’s quick ascent as a public figure, two things eclipsed. The election of Donald Trump and the pandemic. I might add a third — Congress’s and both the Trump and Biden administration’s reaction to it, hosing our economy with more than $9 trillion in new spending and sending our public debt soaring to $31 trillion. That must be a depressing and angering development for someone concerned “about the nation’s generation debt crisis.”
Perhaps unfairly, Sasse became known as a “never Trumper.” He was one of six GOP US Senators impacted by the events of January 6th at the US Capitol in 2021 who held Trump responsible and voted to impeach him. “This violence was the inevitable and ugly outcome of the President’s addiction to constantly stroking division … This is not how we peacefully transition power,” Sasse told Nebraska Public Media.
“As the attack Wednesday was ‘unfolding on television, Donald Trump was walking around the White House confused about why other people on his team weren’t as excited as he was as … rioters [pushed] against Capitol police, trying to get into the building,’ Sasse said. ‘That was happening. He was delighted,’” reported left-leaning HuffPost. “I believe the president has disregarded his oath of office,” Sasse told CBSNews. “He swore an oath to the American people to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. He acted against that. What he did was wicked.”
Trump, as is his custom, denigrated Sasse, who himself has just been overwhelmingly reelected to a second term by Nebraskans, carrying every county in the Cornhusker State. YahooNews:
“He’s bad news, Ben Sasse,” Trump said in May. “He begged for my endorsement, the day after he started hitting me and we hit much harder than he knows how to hit. He’s bad news,” Trump said during a telerally held for Nebraska gubernatorial candidate Charles Herbster (R).
“Should have never given him the endorsement. He was horrible at the beginning. And then he was so good … and then the following day, literally, he started hitting back,” Trump added.
Trump endorsed the Nebraska Republican in September 2019, saying in a tweet at the time that he had “done a wonderful job representing the people of Nebraska.”
Sasse’s voting record was not only solidly conservative, but he also overwhelmingly supported Trump’s agenda in the US Senate. He also recoiled at the Democratic politicization of the January 6th attack to denigrate all Trump supporters. “I don’t think we should bundle together the hundreds of violent mob rioters of January 6 and the 74 million Trump supporters, even though a huge share of the latter category do still believe, you know, the untrue thing—the lie—that the election was stolen,” Sasse told NPR.
But it probably should surprise no one that Sasse cut his eight-year Senate career short for a return to academia, based on a timeline of his pre-Senate career. After graduation in 1994, his first job with the Boston Consulting Group lasted a year. His first political appointment as chief of staff to the Office of Legal Policy at the US Department of Justice also lasted a year. During that time, he commuted to his job from Austin, Texas, where he also served as an assistant professor at the University of Texas.
Sasse followed that up with six months as chief of staff to then-US Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE). In July 2007, he was confirmed as an Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services. His job ended with the rest of the Bush Administration following the 2008 election.
A few months later, at age 37, he assumed the presidency of the failing Midland Lutheran College (which he renamed Midland University) in late 2009. It was his longest-tenured position – five years – until he won a seat in the US Senate.
As his books were published, Sasse was visibly and aggressively raising money nationally early in Trump’s presidency. I co-hosted a fundraising event for him in Philadelphia. Just before the 2020 elections, Sasse’s growing frustration with the Senate became evident in a provocative op-ed he wrote for the Wall Street Journal, “Making the Senate Great Again.” I’m guessing it didn’t sit well with most of his colleagues.
He called for “cutting the cameras” on the Senate floor and abolishing standing committees to return the Senate to its role as “the greatest deliberative body.”
He called for Senators to live together in a dormitory. “A lot of time is spent demonizing the opposition, but most senators can get along quite well,” Sasse wrote. Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii is as liberal as the day is long, but he’s my friend. Senators should live, eat, and meet in dormitories when the Senate is in session. It’s hard to demonize people you spend time with every day.”
He called for repealing the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, which provided for direct popular election of US Senators instead of via state legislatures as occurred before 1913 (I agree with him, by the way). He lamented the Senate’s inability to pass a real budget. He’s not wrong; Congress hasn’t adopted a real budget and passed all 13 major appropriation bills in time (before the start of the fiscal year) since I was Secretary of the Senate (not that I had anything to do with that).
Sasse also likely saw his path to higher public office cut short by his break with Donald Trump and changing political dynamics in the GOP. Legislative accomplishments and visibility waned, and reports of his growing disinterest in the Senate grew. At age 50, he’s making another career change. His seat will remain in reliably Republican hands, courtesy of an appointment by outgoing GOP Governor Pete Ricketts or his successor, Jim Pillen. Ricketts lost a race for US Senate in 2006 against then-incumbent Democrat Ben Nelson.
Sasse will soon finally be addressed as “Mr. President,” but perhaps not for the position he once envisioned. I think he’ll make a fine college president, perhaps not unlike Perdue University’s retiring Mitch Daniels. Some see Gov. Ron DeSantis’s conspiratorial hand in bringing a “never Trump” Senator to lead one of the state’s major universities, with 50,000 students. I still like Senator Sasse and wish him all the best.
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I also like Sasse (fellow St. John’s College–not University, BTW) grad. He’s thoughtful and articulate, though do I think he was frequently unfair to Trump. I think he’ll better serve the nation in academia than in the swamp pit of either branch of Congress and probably be happier. That student body is larger than my home town, a State (AK) capital no less!
Oh good, let’s see Kelly and VTK fight!
And for that reason, good riddance, but woe to those university professors who will be indoctrinating students with this garbage history.
I no longer like Ben Sasse. I am sad about this. I recall liking him at one point.
He was in a tough position politically. I was very strongly anti-Trump during the primaries in 2016, though I refused to say “never.” I gave Trump a chance to make his case to me, and cautiously gave him my vote in 2016. I because a strong, and then enthusiastic, supporter of Trump over his first term. He actually led me to reconsider many of my former views, which I appreciate.
Kelly, I have to disagree with this part:
I don’t think that Sasse did this at all. He voted for conviction in the second impeachment, didn’t he? That was the politicization of the January 6 attack. He can say whatever he wants, but going along with the post-January 6 Left-wing hysteria was pitiful, to me. Going along with the simplistic narrative that concerns over the 2020 election are “the lie” is playing along with the Left-wing narrative.
Sasse may just be too nice a guy. You do indicate this, Kelly, with the part about being “friends” with Democrats. The Democratic party is just plain Satanic at this point. I realize that it’s not pleasant to think this about people, but about half of our countrymen favor killing babies, sanctify anal sex, and support castration and mastectomies for confused teenagers.
I haven’t been a fan of National Review or their staff since the start of the Iraq War. Back then people like David Frum were writing that anyone who didn’t go along with their lies was unpatriotic. Iraq was a total and complete disaster, yet the same fools are still around lying, trying to get us involved in wars, sending Americans to die needlessly while they sit in safety, spending trillions of dollars we don’t have on nothing of value, killing tens if not hundreds of thousands of civilians, torturing people in CIA run prisons with a gulag at Guantanamo, and to top it off losing the war they rushed into. Today, it’s Ukraine and it’s the same group of incompetent liars. Pointing out the obvious gets you branded as a Putin puppet. Sasser is among these people. The country is far better off without them.
Both of these statements are so fundamentally flawed that one’s motives, one’s character, or one’s intelligence are called into question for making them. [edited for Mark]
The first statement is uttered without regard to the years long partisan, unethical, in some cases illegal, in all cases radical, attacks and division that predicated any response from President Trump. Does Sasse acknowledge any of that? If not, why the hell doesn’t he acknowledge any of that? If so, why single out Trump instead of any number of worse offenders (assuming that defensive retaliation is offending to begin with)?
The second is just silly in light of all we know about Fake News. That’s not just a slogan or some slight bias. It’s real and we’ve seen major recent examples of it over and over. Yet he quotes HuffPo and CBS News as if these accounts as described can be thought of as undisputed truth enough to condemn Trump as wicked, and this wickedness is unwarranted and mostly a danger only from the direction of Trump and MAGA. How can he be that obtuse? Or is he getting something out of it?
The only way I can make sense of this sentence is this:
You (not an inanimate “it”) are calling into question the motives, character, or intelligence of the author, Kelly Johnson (not some anonymous “one“).
If I have misunderstood what you wrote, please correct me.
I question the motive, character, and intelligence of the one who made the original statements, i.e. Sasse, because those statements are so fundamentally and obviously flawed. Everyone else has cause to do the same.
Thanks for the knowledgeable, straightforward, and honest insight into Ben Sasse. I had come to see him only in the light of “Never-Trump”, even though I was aware of his original conservative bona fides. I wonder, however, how Senator Sasse knew what was going on in President Trump’s mind. I assume Sasse was in the Capitol Building and Trump was in the White House.
Mind-Reading Trump: It’s Not Just For Democrats.
Ha! Isn’t that the truth? No matter how much good one is doing, for the country and the world, if one is working from a conservative perspective, one must be perfect in all ways or one will be crucified for any perceived ill. This is our big problem and why we aren’t winning.
True. The difference between Trump and Sasse is that Trump was on the front line while Sasse wasn’t. All that other stuff is true enough and good, but the moment (including the last several decades) demanded something more concrete and kinetic. It demanded fight, via civil means, not both sides-ism or worse.
I put Sasse in the “insufferable scold” bucket. That may be unfair, but I haven’t seen evidence to the contrary.
Exactly my reaction.
I had swallowed the irrational us-vs.-them right-wing narrative about Sasse whole. This is the first I’ve heard about of the true history. (I don’t follow the politics of personality, unfortunately).
It makes a lot more sense than the “Never-Trumper” propaganda, which I had accepted, lacking any objective reporting to contradict it. I couldn’t figure how a guy like Sasse who seemed like a stand-up guy, could have morphed into an anti-Trumper. Fact is, it seems, he was a stand-up guy from beginning to end.
I wish him well in his new role.
First I’m not a Ben Sasse guy, my feeling was Sasse tried to stake claim to the “Trump is bad” position early on to appease the “I’m really, really smart because I don’t like Trump crowd”(ie: NT’s …. before the term had ever caught on).
Sasse must have bet, like all the NT’s, that Trump was going to crash and burn early in his Presidency …. which makes Sasse as brutally wrong in his political assessment as all the other NT’s were …. which in turn makes Sasse’s retirement from elective politics a wise choice given his proclivity to flail around in the political waters he is wading in.
As an aside …. the Trump tweet above is exactly what is wrong with Trump.
The tweet is entirely unnecessary, it is cringe worthy immature name calling(Liddle’ is just too weird …. especially the apostrophe at the end), and if anything U of Florida WILL probably regret hiring Sasse ….. because Sasse is too conservative for today’s typical state University (ie: not the point Trump was attempting to make … ie: If you’re going to hurl insults at least try to be accurate).
In any case Sasse gone …. who cares …. Nebraska will probably elect another (R) even more conservative than Sasse.
And …. I hope Trump decides not to run for President in 2024.
DeSantis 2024!
I’m intrigued by Charles Cooke’s article on that NR cover. What was the worst fish in America in 2014?
Except for the fact that you left out the last two sentences of my comment where in I came up with exactly the the opposite Conclusion as yours, I agree.
You may have judged his motives correctly. But I think you may be misjudging what makes a guy like Sasse tick.
He strikes me as a man who views politics as, ultimately a struggle for the victory of the ideas one believes to be right, over those one believes to be wrong.
Not ultimately a cynical struggle for the victory of one’s own person, and one’s personal allies against one’s personal enemies. Not where one’s beliefs and values are irrelevant, and the only concern of the politician is to shrewdly judge who will “crash and burn”, and who will grab the power and glory.
LOL, I had exactly the same thought upon viewing the photo.
I think Sasse’s downfall was courting libertarians behind enemy lines. I think his public NT persona, while supporting Trump’s policies and being strongly conservative, was to give the impression he was non partisan and could call balls and strikes against his own side… because really, he was trying to be a libertarian senator, not a Republican one.
But the problem is that libertarians expected censure of Trump from republicans as proof of integrity. Which only works if Trump deserves it, but no one really was interested in if Trump deserved it at all… just that a R was doing it meant they had more integrity than the other tribalism’s.
Sasse’s problem is that he is a total D-bag. Academia is a good place for a person with such an over-inflated ego.
Pennsylvania’s Republican candidate for governor Doug Mastriano also has a PhD in history and four master’s degrees and served in the US Army for over 30 years, from 1986 to 2017, reaching the rank of colonel. For some reason the PhD in history and four master’s degrees don’t help him with National Review or places like that. Weird.
Is it possibly because National Review is run by members of the One Big Money Party?
They have never met a trade deal favorable to China or over-sized globalist companies that they did not cheer for. Entering into wars and sending American jobs overseas are among their favorite political activities.
Companies whose work forces did the jobs from their homes are now down sizing those work forces and replacing the American workers with people in developing nations.
You might think that the resulting savings in both American highrise real estate once used to accommodate the workers, plus the huge savings on employee salaries and benefits means a savings on products like life insurance, health insurance and car insurance, but as per usual, there will simply be higher salaries for the execs who thought up these money-saving ideas.
If my recent experience with customer service at AARP Supplemental Health Insurance is any indication, the average American might as well consult an old Crazy Eight Fortune ball rather than dialing an 800 number. (At least the Crazy Eight Fortune ball had answers in English.)
Shiva called with an appointment reminder.
Sasse’s criticisms of President Trump will make his leadership of the University easier. I suspect elements of the faculty would be up in arms if he was a vocal Trump supporter. Same with some more activist students. I am a Florida law school alum, so I got the email notice of his pending appointment. January 6 was a successful progressive political operation in that it separated Trump from from many Republican lawmakers. Sasse will benefit from the phenomena, and so will UF.
You mean he served his own self interest and not that of the country? Huh, imagine that.
Gotta love that NR headline in hindsight. Some nemesis.
Concur.
This is why I call them Demoncrats.
I don’t say it quite this way, but this is basically my view and few on the right actually think it through enough.
Back when I liked Jonah Goldberg, he was the only politician he would ever have on his podcast. Goldberg doesn’t wear it on his sleeve, but he really knows Austrian economics. Sasse was pitching one of his books. Goldberg asked him about a half a dozen reasonable public policy questions, which in my view was coming from Austrian thinking and what Sasse was babbling about and he couldn’t answer any of them. It was unbelievable.
He whines about populism and how people should act more reasonable, but that is easy compared to coming up with something original about public policy. I’m also skeptical about coming together with Democrats on public policy that improves things. He seems to talk like that. All they do is either create problems or lie about them to grab power, and then they screw everything up which makes people think the government needs to do more.
If he actually figures out how to make higher education not be an over-priced rip off more power to him. Actually develop human capital at a fair price. Right now the whole thing is about ripping off the tax payer and the student while indoctrinating them. Because of demographics they will do anything to keep this model intact.