Former U.S. Senator Ben Sasse Is Dying Better Than Most Of Us Are Living
The former senator’s faith, courage, and optimism in the face of terminal cancer offer a lesson far bigger than politics.
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The Man Who Refused To Perform
A strange thing is happening as former U.S. Senator Ben Sasse faces stage-four pancreatic cancer: the dying man often sounds more alive than the healthy political class.
Sasse never quite fit modern politics. He was too serious for cable news, too interested in history, and too resistant to the outrage cycle that now drives Washington.
A Yale-trained historian, former college president, husband, father, Christian thinker, and senator from Nebraska, Sasse built a reputation as one of the more unusual Republicans of his generation. Early in his Senate career, he famously waited nearly a year before giving his first floor speech because he wanted to listen before speaking — a nearly extinct concept in American politics.
I remember first meeting Sasse before he was elected to the Senate, when he came to Orange County to raise money for his campaign. I have met him several times since, but that first meeting stayed with me. What struck me was not ego or ambition. It was his candor, kindness, warmth, and what felt like a deep love of both the country and conservative principles. He was much more interested in finding out about who you were, than telling you who he was.
He known for his encouraging an environment of civility and compromise, and calling for us all to embrace the highest of moral standards in how we carry ourselves in our interactions with one another - regardless of differences in point of view or political philosophy. This certainly caused him on more than one attention to level critiques at Donald Trump, but not in the cheap, cable-news way that turned Trump-bashing into its own political industry. Sasse’s criticism was usually a call to higher standards — constitutional seriousness, personal character, institutional restraint, and moral responsibility. But the critique was not merely personal. It flowed from the same worldview that shaped the rest of his public life: politics matters, but character matters more.
The Senator Who Wanted Adults In The Room
One reason Sasse frustrated people is that he seemed to believe the Senate should still function like the Senate.
That sounds almost quaint now.
When Sasse finally delivered his first Senate floor speech, he lamented what Congress had become: a place driven by sound bites, fundraising clips, partisan theater, and cable-news outrage instead of serious deliberation. He argued the country did not need less disagreement. It needed more meaningful disagreement.
Sasse often sounded less like a modern politician and more like a frustrated civics professor trapped inside Washington. He talked about institutions, constitutional order, civic decline, family breakdown, loneliness, technological addiction, and the danger of building an entire identity around political tribalism.
At times, that made him sound preachy. Sometimes it made him sound disconnected from the emotional intensity of populist politics. And yes, his criticism of Trump alienated conservatives who believed Sasse spent too much time challenging fellow Republicans while the Left was aggressively reshaping American institutions.
But even his critics understood something important: Sasse actually believed what he was saying.
In 2023, Sasse resigned from the Senate to become president of the University of Florida, surprising many who assumed he still had a long political future ahead of him. In 2024, he stepped away from that job, too, to help care for his wife Melissa as her own health challenges worsened.
That decision feels revealing now. In a world where public figures cling desperately to titles, Sasse walked away from power because his family needed him more.
Not Dead Yet
Most people who receive a diagnosis like this understandably disappear from public life. They retreat into fear, anger, privacy, or exhaustion. Pancreatic cancer is brutal. The treatments are brutal. The statistics are brutal.
Ben Sasse started a podcast.
Its title says almost everything: “Not Dead Yet.”
Co-hosted with political analyst Chris Stirewalt, the show has featured conversations with people ranging from Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett to actor Chris Pratt and legendary broadcaster Al Michaels. But the point is not celebrity. It is the spirit behind it. I haven’t missed a single episode.
Sasse sounds startlingly alive.
Not fake-positive. Not motivational-speaker cheerful. Not pretending cancer is beautiful. He talks openly about pain, treatment, fatigue, and uncertainty. But he also talks about gratitude, friendship, books, faith, humor, and the ordinary joys of family life.
That combination feels almost foreign in an age of screens, status anxiety, and relentless performance.
We avoid discussions about death until we absolutely cannot anymore. We numb anxiety with distraction and increasingly define human value by productivity and public relevance.
Yet here is a man confronting death directly while somehow sounding calmer, more grounded, and more present than many perfectly healthy people.
Faith Bigger Than Fear
What makes Sasse compelling is that his optimism does not appear rooted in denial. It appears rooted in belief.
Sasse has long spoken openly about his Christian faith, and now that faith is no longer theoretical. It is being tested in the most difficult way imaginable.
Christian hope is not the same thing as assuming everything will turn out fine. It is not positive thinking with Bible verses attached. It is the belief that suffering is real, death is real, and yet death does not get the final word.
That is why Sasse’s public posture matters.
In interviews and essays, he has spoken about suffering without self-pity. He talks about redeeming time, loving family well, staying curious, and refusing to emotionally surrender before his body does. There is no bitterness in the way he speaks publicly. No performative anger. No sense that the world owes him more years.
That does not mean he is fearless. It means fear is no longer in charge.
And maybe that is what so many Americans are hungry to see.
Our politics rewards outrage, vanity, and tribal warfare. Everyone performs strength while privately exhausted. Everyone tries to look invulnerable while quietly terrified of losing status, relevance, health, youth, or control.
Ben Sasse, facing terminal cancer, somehow seems freer than many people who are healthy.
So, Does It Matter?
Maybe the real story here is not cancer.
Maybe it is what happens when a person spends years building an actual worldview instead of a brand.
You do not have to agree with all of Ben Sasse’s politics to recognize something profoundly moving in the way he is approaching this chapter of his life. At a moment when American culture feels spiritually exhausted, Sasse projects something rare: coherence.
He appears intellectually serious, emotionally steady, spiritually grounded, and grateful for the life he still has, even while knowing it may be ending far sooner than he hoped.
Most public figures spend their lives trying to avoid appearing weak. Sasse is publicly confronting mortality with honesty, humor, faith, and dignity.
What unsettles me most about watching Ben Sasse now is not that he is dying. All of us are. It is that he seems to understand that fact more clearly than most of us who are healthy.
And if a dying man can still speak with gratitude, courage, humor, faith, and hope, the rest of us may need to ask whether we are really living at all.
More Watching/Reading/Listening
Below I have curated various Sasse things. I hope that you take the time to go through them, and gain an appreciation for this very special person, who is… not dead, yet.
This is the first speech that Senator Sasse gave on the floor of the Senate, after waiting a full year to do so…
Here are two amazing interviews, I recommend them both… (there are a lot of them)
An interview with the Hoover Institution’s Peter Robinson…
And with Ross Douthat at the New York Times…
Sasse has written a serious and timely warning that appeared in the Wall Street Journal last week about raising children in the age of artificial intelligence. His point is not that technology is evil, but that it is powerful enough to reshape work, identity, relationships and even character. The future, he argues, will divide those who master technology from those mastered by it. The answer begins at home: reading, hard work, real community, self-control and habits that form human beings before algorithms do. It is a thoughtful piece about parenting, virtue and whether our children will use the machine — or be used by it.
I have used a gift link (part of my paid subscription to the WSJ) so you can read this right here.
Not Dead Yet, The Podcast
I mentioned this in my column, so worth your time. Start with the 24 minute introduction episode. Below is a link to the Apple Podcast version. But you will find it in your favorite podcasting app…
Great article, Jon!
Thank you, Jon! Beautifully written about a remarkable man.