This is an appreciation, not an obituary; former Republican senator Ben Sasse from Nebraska is still with us. But two days before Christmas, the 53-year-old Sasse announced online, with classic Midwestern directness, “I’ll cut to the chase: Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.”

Sometimes the best of us get dealt the worst of it. In July 2024, Sasse stepped down from his position as president of the University of Florida, to help care for his wife, Melissa, who had suffered multiple strokes and a brain aneurysm in the past, after she was diagnosed with epilepsy.

A fifth-generation Nebraskan, Sasse grew up in Fremont, a county seat with about 27,000 people, where he was his high school’s valedictorian. He went to Harvard University, once joking that he chose the Ivy League school “not because of superior academics, but because of inferior athletics.”

ESPN analyst Mel Kiper Jr. speaks of certain players having a “constant motor.” Sasse’s pre-Senate life was a fast-moving blur of accomplishments: a master’s degree from St. John’s College in Annapolis and a PhD in history from Yale; stints of business consulting; chief of staff to then-Rep. Jeff Fortenberry of Nebraska in 2005; teaching at the University of Texas at Austin; two years as an assistant secretary at........

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