Ben Gets Sassy

If you saw “60 Minutes” last week, despite the MAGA leanings of the new owners, Scott Pelley interviewed a former member of Congress, a Republican, who is dying.

Ben Sasse is a former member of Congress, a Senator from Nebraska from 2015 to 2023, who resigned to become President of a college in Florida, and is now dying of cancer. He is only 54 years old. And, sadly, like so many others, he can only tell the truth about our United States Congress after resigning, deciding not to run again, or, in this case, near death.

I'll get into what he said in a minute, but I am dismayed at the last sentence I wrote. What has been, now jocularly, described as the "World's Greatest Deliberative Body" is now a partisan, gridlocked, really bad Broadway show. I read today a Facebook post by Senator John Kennedy, the misnamed Senator from Louisiana, who more resembles Senator Jubilation T. Cornpone from the Lil Abner comic strip, ruminating on how sad the world would be without Donald Trump.

Kennedy is one of those who goes back and forth on Trump, like the malleable political comic Bill Maher, depending on the direction of the current political zeitgeist.

A wet finger in the wind for a better America.

It's those kinds of profiles in courage that have put us where we are now. And while, as a cancer survivor myself, I can certainly sympathize with Sasse's criticisms of the current crowd under the dome, I do have to ask, why only now?

To his credit, Sasse voted to impeach Trump over the January 6th riot and called the President a "broken man" after the event. But he voted to acquit in the first one after the Ukraine extortion call and voted for the border wall. Before January 6th, he was pretty standard issue MAGA, frankly. And now, only in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, can he unburden himself.

The 60 Minutes interview was, of course, very sympathetic with scenes of his family, and a bucolic life in Plainview, Nebraska, but it's easy to forget that though he was the son of a high school teacher and football coach, Sasse studied at Harvard University, St. John's College, and Yale University. He taught at the University of Texas and served as an assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in the George W. Bush administration. In 2010, Sasse was named the 15th president of Midland University in Fremont, Nebraska.

He had his eyes on the prize early on, and that is certainly admirable for a kid from rural Nebraska. And, he made it eventually, a young, attractive Senator with no doubt, a Presidential run in his future. So, yes, at some point he apparently began to see it all as partisan theatre that did nothing to advance the country, the economy or the American experiment.

But, again, to be brutally honest, at the University of Florida, he expanded the budget of his office, hired friends and old colleagues, and spent way too much on entertainment and travel. Hey, you can take the boy out of Plainview, but you can't...

But now, he faces a devastating fate and is opening up. Better late than never, I suppose, but I wish it had been sooner, when there was more on the line. Either way though, he has revealed the dirty little not-so-secret that it's all a show, a performance.

One of the reasons we should mourn the defunding of PBS is the possible demise of shows like Firing Line with interviews like these guys...

So now we have a sort of "Shadow Presidency" as the British might call it, whose sole function is to oppose, no matter how logical the proposal is. It is indeed now, "Party over Principle," and like, on the internet, "Owning the Libs" or "Owning MAGA" is now the whole and only goal.

And lest I come off too partisan, OK, I understand, Nancy Pelosi did the same thing.

It has become toxic and absolutist, and though I wish he had spoken out sooner, I am glad Ben Sasse has finally unburdened himself.

Look, the national debt has now reached the size of the whole economy. If you owed everything you earned, you'd set your hair on fire. But each side has to keep giving its followers the stuff they want, and that stuff is breaking us in either spending or cutting income because a tech bro wants a tax cut.

This whole democracy thing only works if reasonable people agree on reasonable things. This isn't a war where you need the unconditional surrender of the other guys, even if that's how the President described it in a tweet this weekend.

When President Trump decided to undo everything that had Barack Obama's name on it, why did no Republican say, "Hey, a treaty with Iran might not be a bad idea."

When President Biden decided to reverse the "Remain in Mexico" policy on immigration, why did no Democrat say, "Hey, that might not be a bad idea."

It's because they can't. If you are off the reservation on any issue, you are a "RINO" or, I guess, a "DINO."

And I mean, any issue. Any one issue.

So, do please watch the 60 Minutes episode with Sasse and think about what he says. In the end, it doesn't matter why he finally says it, but simply that he does. And listen now, before the gang that now runs CBS removes anything like this.

After all, soon they will be running these stories past the ultimate News Director on Pennsylvania Avenue.