As he daily brushes shoulders with death, former Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska has a new perspective on the roles that matter.
Sasse announced in December that he was diagnosed with Stage Four metastasized pancreatic cancer. There is no cure, which meant, as he said in his post, he was “gonna die.”
On Sunday, he was interviewed by CBS for “60 Minutes,” and spent the interview reflecting on the only job that ultimately mattered in his life.
Sasse responded to a prompt from interviewer Scott Pelley, who noted, “Many senators I know would not be able to breathe without that job. It would kill them to leave.”
“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,” Sasse said.
“Many senators I know would not be able to breathe without that job. It would kill them to leave,” says Scott Pelley.
“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,” responds former Sen. Ben Sasse.… pic.twitter.com/lXfzeDWr7Y
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) April 26, 2026
“We got a lot of 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,” he said.
“Bulls**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 6th. But never top,” he said.
Elsewhere in the interview, the 54-year-old spoke about how walking with terminal cancer has changed him, according to CBS.
“The lie I want to tell myself is that I’m the center of everything. And I’m going to be around forever. And I can work harder, and store up enough, that I can atone for my own brokenness. I can’t,” Sasse said. “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 omnicompetent and interesting.”
Sasse said current American political discourse is missing the point.
“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,” he said.
Sasse said issues such as artificial intelligence and the digital revolution, which rank low on the political priority list, are ones that need to rise to the top.
“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 going to have that world again,” Sasse said.
“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,” he continued.
Sasse also said the political fervor should come from the grassroots, not be driven by Washington.
“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,” he said.
National political dysfunction is “an echo of larger problems,” he said.
“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,” Sasse remarked.
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