Though laudable in many ways, he did not succeed on the terms he himself set.
Though laudable in many ways, he did not succeed on the terms he himself set.
B obby Miller’s piece this morning, “In Defense of Ben Sasse,” takes issue with the numerous “conservatives across the spectrum” who argued that “the soon-to-be-former senator from Nebraska wasted his time in office.” Sasse, Miller writes, “is genuinely interested in ideas. Unlike national conservatives, who prioritize stoking grievances over advancing a concrete agenda,” the Tocqueville-quoting Nebraskan “has shown a genuine interest in applying conservative principles to address the problems of the 21st century.” Concrete examples of that “genuine interest,” however, are few and far between: Sasse published two books during his time in office and was a regular on the conservative-wonk podcast and speaking circuit, but his numerous “ideas” and “conservative principles” rarely made their way into actual legislation — ostensibly what the good people of Nebraska had elected him to do.
Sasse is undoubtedly a smart, eloquent man. I bought and read both of his books, and, for a time, at least, was charmed by his self-styled public image as a wonky, self-effacing political-theory nerd. But it’s not entirely clear how the senator, who was routinely rated as among the least-effective lawmakers in the world’s greatest deliberative body, is an aspirational example of “advancing a concrete agenda.” Pace Miller, the Center for Effective Lawmaking, which gives a “Legislative Effectiveness Score” to members of Congress, rated Sasse as the third-least effective Senate Republican in the 114th Congress, the fourth-least effective in the 115th, and the third-least effective in the 116th. In contrast, Josh Hawley, an embodiment of the national-conservative wing of the GOP that ostensibly prioritizes “stoking grievances over advancing a concrete agenda,” was rated as the 26th-most effective member of the Senate GOP during the 116th Congress, having introduced nearly four times the number of substantive bills as did Sasse during the last legislative session.
Miller isn’t convinced. Citing my previous criticism of Sasse, he writes:
Others lamented Sasse’s lack of legislative accomplishments. National Review’s Nate Hochman said that “it’s tough to ignore the fact that [Sasse] defined himself . . . in terms of his dissatisfaction with the fact that the legislative branch doesn’t legislate; all while being one of the least proactive legislators in said branch.”
This criticism misses a few things. For one, the number of bills introduced or passed is not the best metric by which to gauge the success of a senator’s time in office, especially in an era in which Congress has often rendered itself impotent, and is often complicit in bad policy when it does manage to rouse itself to action. Moreover, Sasse has focused on less sexy matters, such as national-security issues, that don’t grab as many headlines as those issues the chamber’s showboaters gravitate towards.
It’s worth noting that the Center for Effective Lawmaking’s assessment is about more than “the number of bills introduced or passed” and entails “four separate components: proven ability, advancing legislation, members’ agenda items, and progression through the legislative process into law.” In other words, the score reflects a lawmaker’s ability to do the things that he says he wants to do. We’re not talking about what’s “sexy” or grabs headlines here — we’re talking about a senator’s substantive record during seven and a half years in office. What, precisely, did Sasse do with his focus on national-security issues? What actions did he take that leave America safer and more secure now than it was when he entered office in 2015?
But more to the point, my central criticism of Sasse was that the senator fell short of his own standards. Miller maintains that I wasn’t using the best metric. But Sasse himself routinely argued that Congress has “rendered itself impotent” because legislators refuse to legislate — in fact, a large part of his self-styled political identity, which succeeded in wooing many a conservative-wonk heart, was his (entirely legitimate) criticism of the legislative branch’s timidity. “The problem of a weak Congress — which we are — and the growth of the unchecked Executive should be bad news to all of us,” he declared on the Senate floor in a 2015 speech. “But more importantly than us, this should be bad news for every constituent who casts their votes for us under the impression that the Congress actually makes decisions and doesn’t just offer whiny suggestions.” In his much-lauded speech at the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, he complained that “most people here want their jobs more than they really want to do legislative work. . . . And so, what we mostly do around this body is not pass laws.” Two years later, he penned an essay in the Wall Street Journal arguing that “lawmakers — Republicans and Democrats — don’t make laws. . . . It’s time for Congress to build some muscle and figure out how to serve the American people by doing our constitutionally mandated jobs again.”
Sasse failed according to the very terms he articulated in his critique of Congress. Others, such as Miller, can take issue with those terms, but the unavoidable fact is that they were the ones he set.
In the rare instances that Sasse was actually confronted about this disconnect, his answers were — to put it charitably — unconvincing. In a 2018 interview with Margaret Hoover, for example, he was pressed on his absence during the GOP’s failed Obamacare-repeal push — one of the main pitches of Sasse’s candidacy in 2014:
Hoover: You had been a Senate-confirmed appointee in the Bush administration, you ran in 2014 largely on a platform about repealing the Affordable Care Act. You got to the Senate, Republicans had, after Trump won the election, the Senate, the House, and the White House. Finally, there was an opportunity to deliver on a promise that Republicans and conservatives had promised their constituencies.
Sasse: Yeah.
Hoover: For years, that was a big thing. And you argue we should do big things. Why wasn’t the Senate able to do something big?
Sasse: Yeah. ’Cause, it turns out lots and lots of Republicans wanted to be against Obamacare but not actually be for a system of free-market healthcare, and so when you had to actually act, there were a bunch of people who didn’t want to do it.
Hoover: Why didn’t you take the lead in writing the repeal bill?
Sasse: So, when you’re a freshman and you’re not on a committee of jurisdiction, uh, you don’t have the leverage to get that done.
So, you see, it was the political cowardice of other Republicans — and Sasse’s lack of leverage — that caused the Nebraskan to default on his central campaign promise. But Sasse was more reluctant than many of his colleagues to even talk about the issue: “During a June 25 appearance at a conservative activist conference, as other senators in his own party were criticizing the [Obamacare replacement] bill and the process by which it had been constructed, Sasse asked whether his remarks would be on the record before announcing that he would not have any comments at all,” Slate reported in 2017. “It was only after the proposal had almost completely stalled that Sasse proposed an alternative.” This is the same self-styled anti-partisan who, in his first speech on the Senate floor, lambasted his colleagues “for not wanting to lead on hard issues and take hard votes,” and called for more political courage — a willingness “to suffer for waging an honorable fight for the long-term that has near-term political downsides.” What hard issues did Sasse lead on during his almost eight years in the Senate? Outside of the second impeachment of Donald Trump, what hard votes with near-term political downsides did he make?
To his credit, Ben Sasse was a reliable conservative vote, an articulate defender of our founding principles, and a personally likable man who avoided the kind of self-debasement that so often seems to be a feature of contemporary American politics. He will doubtless be an excellent university president. The job of lawmaker he leaves behind is best reserved for those who intend to make laws.