Former Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse was reelected in 2020. He was very popular both in his home state & in the Republican elite. I’m not aware that he has achieved anything beyond that in politics, but perhaps nothing more is expected in our times. At any rate, he has moved on to another job, something he’s more familiar with, running a college. In his earlier middle age, he succeeded, by most accounts, in saving Midland University, which used to be called Midland Lutheran College before he took over & turned it around. Now, he’s running University of Florida in Gainesville. In order to fix it, he’s done what everyone with money & ambition is doing: Sasse hired McKinsey to consult on how to make the university into a profitable business proposition. The contract is almost $5 million.
We have here a last, or late, sign of the alliance of Republicans & business. Yet in America big business is increasingly liberal, partly because of its reliance on or liability before the federal gov’t, but partly because all our elites are now college-educated & there is a collegiate class forming. Conservatives are not welcome in that class, so that even most of the Republicans become liberals. The McKinsey vision for University of Florida is surely all about becoming part of the 21st c., globally aware, active, & attractive. The result will not be good for education or patriotism, but it could make for useful middle-class workers in the Progressive future.
Now, conservatives don’t take over institutions of higher education because they are, whether by nature or by habit, unambitious types. To speak very briefly, love of victory is not a strong passion in them. Republicans are often enough different—they like money, victory, & prestige, but they have no idea what education is, nor any respect for it, because they believe it’s a liberal pursuit. Conservatives are aware of politics, but reject it, because they prefer Christianity or sometimes merely a regional way of life; Republicans do not know politics at all, which is why it’s constantly the case that their institutions are lost to them, or their children. With Republicans you can win now only to lose later on any major issue—immigration, to take something of vast national scale. With conservatives, you can lose right now: Why wait!
The former Sen. Sasse was one of a few males in their prime who were expected to change America for the better a decade back, at the time when the party was trying to recover from its Bush-era catastrophes in foreign affairs & the economy. Many decent people very foolishly even considered Sasse a presidential figure, but a politician should be the leader of a faction of the party before anyone entertains such fantasies; further, Senators are not presidential figures in the GOP… But that expectation, precisely because it’s unserious, & that character, precisely because it’s unsuitable, offer a good example of the contradictions of the conservative Republican & the delusions of morality in our times. Whereas people might entertain dreams of the older American republic, the ambitious have to run things & make lots of money now, because there’s nothing else to do; morality certainly has very little to do with success in our elite institutions. Perhaps Sasse himself wanted to be president, & in a way he is: Our universities themselves have CEOs, just like the country. Perhaps President Sasse has a preference for getting things done, not just having his way, & surely there’s no one who can get things done in the Senate. Further, he’s not particularly interested in politics—his name is not attached to any ambitious project to make the Senate anything to be proud of, which is what politics is primarily about.
Finally, let’s look at that character. Here below is the post-Harvard career of this bright figure of the conservative world:
This is what success looks like in America for the people who talk public morality, moving around from position to position without much coherence. If he had been liberal, this would be called his years of finding himself or his journey or whatnot. I’m sure he might prefer instead to talk of a vocation… This certainly looks like a very good CV, as people say, full of opportunities to go from here to there to do this or that for such & such a period of time, before something more remunerative & more prestigious comes along. Political office is just a part of such success. Whether it is lack of opportunity or lack of conviction, the demands of success, as well as its character, cultivate in the successful among us a habit of leaving life up to chance rather than choice, while thinking themselves destined, since personal ambition, professional achievement, & public approval go together for them. Their defining experience, however, is not Progress, but change. On the right, this is said to have to do with God… Of course, this kind of career in consulting & gov’t is not something the right invented or controls; people on the right & their “values” do not in fact involve any understanding of the character or uses of such institutions or the clerical elites involved. The result of such activity is the weakening of any confidence in virtue, the principle of the right.
All of this will now be put to the test in the university, supposedly the home of education. Florida is a firmly Republican state, Gainesville is the flagship campus of the University of Florida, the money is rolling in by the hundreds of millions of dollars, & the future looks busy. If Republican opinion is correct, we must expect an amazing good thing. We will at any rate learn what President Sasse believes by the way he tries to reform his institution. The choice of McKinsey is catastrophic, but typical for his CV. But maybe there will be pleasant surprises ahead.
I saw this coming a long time ago. His book on loneliness in America was pathetic; contrast it to what Lawler and Tocqueville offer on the same subject. He treated loneliness as if it were a disease to be cured, rather than a permanent aspect of the human condition in need of God
https://www.amazon.com/Them-Hate-Each-Other-Heal/dp/1250193680