Former Sen. Ben Sasse, dying of cancer, reflects on family, faith and the future of America

Ben Sasse would like a final word. At the age of 54, the former U.S. senator of Nebraska is dying of pancreatic cancer. But a new drug is giving him extra time — time to hear his appeal for reason in Washington and community at home. Sasse is a conservative Republican of independent thought. With a PhD in American history, he once told his fellow senators “the people despise us all… because we are not doing our job.” His cancer therapy leaves him looking seriously sunburned. But we found Ben Sasse as insightful, passionate and hopeful as ever.

Ben Sasse: I love America, and I think there’s a lot of big and meaty things that we should’ve been talking about, and we still can talk about. And having a terminal diagnosis isn’t really that unique. We’re all always on the clock. Some of us have the benefit, maybe– it’s a weird word– but the benefit of knowing our time is finite and defined, and it becomes an opportunity to talk about bigger stuff. 

Scott Pelley: And you have focus from that?

Ben Sasse: Yeah. I mean, It’s weird to– be in your early 50s and get a terminal diagnosis, and people all of a sudden act like you’re 93 or 94 and you have a lotta wisdom. I don’t know that I have a lot of wisdom, but I have a lotta things that I think we should be reflecting on together.

Reflecting, he told us, on rebuilding communities — neighbor to neighbor, regulating artificial intelligence before it overwhelms us and mending broken politics.

Ben Sasse: Neither of these parties really have very big or good ideas about 2030 or 2050, at a national security level, at a future of work level, at an institution-building level. The Congress is not wrestling with big or important questions right now.

Scott Pelley: If Congress is looking at the wrong things, what is it missing?

Ben Sasse: We are living through a digital revolution, which is both glorious and horrific at the same time. Because what, what the digital revolution does is it accelerates almost everything about the human experience. Anything that can be reduced to a series of steps, which is most economic activity, is gonna be routinized and become really, really cheap, really fast, and really ubiquitous. We’ve never lived in a world where 22 year olds couldn’t assume that the work they did they would be able to do until death or retirement and we’re never gonna have that world again. And Congress doesn’t talk about any of those kind of most fundamental issues. The disruption of work, for good and for ill, should be front and central. Congress doesn’t even know how to have that conversation.

In 2014, Ben Sasse was a college president in Nebraska when he was recruited to run for Senate. He became one of the most popular politicians in state history — maybe because during Senate recesses he worked as a garbageman and a vendor at Cornhusker games just to stay in touch with the lives of Nebraskans.

Scott Pelley: What makes you a Republican?

Ben Sasse: I’m a Republican because I think the– the Lincoln– Reagan continuum does the best job of building c– constraint on thinking Washington is our fundamental political community. I think your fundamental political community is your neighborhood, and your city hall and may be even your state legislature. And right now– we are sacrificing a lot of our national politics to weird folks who want their main community to be their political tribe at a federal level, and that should be like the ninth thing, or the 15th thing you care about, not the first or second thing.

Scott Pelley: You ended your Republican pantheon with Ronald Reagan. And I wonder, when you look at the Trump Administration today, what do you see?

Ben Sasse: It’s no secret that the current president and I– wrestled on lots and lots of issues. But I– I don’t spend much time commenting on our current politics, because I don’t really think our current politics are driving what’s happening. I think it’s mostly an echo of what’s happening. I think we have really thin, shallow community right now. And unless people know the thickness of their local community, it’s hard to make sense of what national politics are for. I think our national political dysfunction is an echo of larger problems. 

In 2020, Sasse was reelected with more votes in Nebraska than Donald Trump. Then came January 6th. That day, Sasse called out, quote, “the screamers who monetize hate”

Ben Sasse (on 1/6/202): You can’t do big things, together, as Americans if you think other Americans are the enemy.

Later, in Trump’s impeachment over January 6th, Sasse was one of seven Republicans who voted to convict. His stand against the insurrection offended the Nebraska Republican Committee. So, he sent them a message. 

Ben Sasse (on 2/4/2021): Personality cults aren’t conservative. Conspiracy theories aren’t conservative. Lying that an election has been stolen, it’s not conservative. Acting like politics is a religion, it isn’t conservative. 

In 2023, with four years left in his term, Sasse quit to become president of the University of Florida. There had been too little substance in the senate and too much absence from his wife and three children. 

Scott Pelley: Many senators I know would not be able to breathe without that job. It would kill them to leave.

Ben Sasse: I don’t want what you said to be true. But I fear that that is true. And that is a sign of a much, much deeper problem. We got a lotta people who serve in government who really do think the highest and greatest thing you can ever do is have the title senator or congressman. Bull***t. The best thing you can do is be called Dad or Mom, lover, neighbor, friend. Governor? Senator? House member? It’s a great way to serve. It should be your 11th calling or maybe sixth, but never top.

His calling left bipartisan consensus on one thing—the voice of Ben Sasse is missed. Democrat Mark Warner worked with Sasse on the Intelligence Committee. 

Mark Warner: He never really thought about things as conservative, liberal. He much more thought about issues as future, past. 

John Thune: …somebody who was fearless, passionate…

Republican John Thune of South Dakota is the Senate majority leader. 

John Thune: Concern not just for today, but for tomorrow and the future. And someone who wasn’t distracted by all the noise that goes around us on a daily basis. 

Scott Pelley: An example of what the Senate should be?

John Thune: Yes, and hopefully– you know, an inspiration and example that– that many of us can learn from and follow.

Ben Sasse: The Senate needs to be less like Instagram. The Senate needs to be more deliberative. And that means less smack-down nonsense. One of the fundamental mistakes we’ve made over the last 30 or 40 years is putting cameras everywhere in Washington, D.C. This is not an argument against transparency. We should have reporters around. We should have pen and pad. We should have people recording what’s happening. But we should make the Senate less of an institution that is built as a backdrop platform for people to get sound bites. That’s not what the Senate is for. The Senate should be plodding, and steady, and boring, and trustworthy.

Scott Pelley: To be too frank, you were expected to be dead by now.

Ben Sasse: That’s frank. I like it. Let’s be blunt.

Scott Pelley: What changed?

Ben Sasse: Let’s go with– providence, prayer, and a miracle drug. In mid-December I was given a three- to four-month life expectancy. I am on extended time already. I have pancreatic origin cancer that has metastasized a number of places. So, I’ve got lung, vascular, liver, other. Liver’s pretty far along…

Scott Pelley: You have five cancers.

Ben Sasse: Yes, sir.

He’s in a clinical trial for a drug called daraxonrasib, a new idea in therapy. In many cancers it’s a defective gene that signals cells to grow non-stop. The drug blocks that signal. 

Ben Sasse: I have much, much less pain than I had four months ago when I was diagnosed, and I have a massive 76% reduction in tumor volume over the last four months. 

Just this month, the drug maker, Revolution Medicines, reported that patients who had six months, survived a median 13 months. 

Scott Pelley: You are completely devoted to your faith, what’s known as reformed Christianity or Calvinism. And one of the tenets of that faith is that God ordains everything. And I wonder why you think God has put you to this test.

Ben Sasse: Death is wicked. Death is evil. Death is not how it’s supposed to be. And me getting a cancer diagnosis, again, is pretty small on the grand scheme of things. But it’s a touch of grace because it forces me to tell the truth. And the lie I wanna tell myself is that I’m the center of everything. And I’m gonna be around forever. And I can work harder, and store up enough, that I can atone for my own brokenness. I can’t. And so, I hate cancer. But I’m also grateful for it. I tell a lot more truth to myself than I used to do it when I thought I was super omni-competent and interesting. 

He may have to accept the label, “interesting.” Ben Sasse has lived life in a hurry. With more careers than most, and ends with his favorite: a teacher.

Scott Pelley: I make no comparison to what you’re going through. But there was a moment on 9/11 at the World Trade Center that I knew I was dead. And in that lightning flash of an instant, the only thing that crossed my mind was leaving my family behind. And I wonder how you reconcile that.

Ben Sasse: Yeah. I am incredibly blessed. My wife, Melissa, has– we’ve been married 31 years. I– we’re gonna be apart for a time. But she’s tough and gritty and theologically rooted, and she’s gonna be fine. My daughters are 24 and 22. And they’re extraordinary. I wanna walk ’em down the aisle when they get married. That’s not likely to be. That’s not the—the math on my time card. My son– we have a providential surprise. He’s a decade younger than big sisters. He’s 14, and– he’s gonna be fine. He’ll have other—other wise men and women to put a hand on his shoulder. But I’m super bummed to not be there– at 16 and 18 and 20 years old in his life I wanna– give him more advice than he wants, and I wanna put my arm on his shoulder, and I want his shoulders to get taller. But it’s not a surprise to God.

Scott Pelley: And God, you believe, has a plan. 

Ben Sasse: Absolutely. There are no maverick molecules in the universe.

Produced by Maria Gavrilovic. Associate producers, Madeleine Carlisle and Georgia Rosenberg. Broadcast associate, Michelle Karim. Edited by Peter M. Berman.