Ross Douthat

And they tended to be what you might call sort of civic minded, not super partisan, conservative centrists and a few liberals.

But also for a lot of those people, I think your career was kind of a case study in the limits of a sort of.

Certain kind of civic minded politics in a more populist age.

So just first of all, just tell me why you ran for office in the first place.

You had done health policy.

You'd been president of a small college.

Why did you decide to become a United States senator?

Well, just pause there.

When you got into the Senate, every senator gives a maiden speech.

And you... I waited a year because it was the old tradition.

You waited a year, right, which was itself, I think, an example of...

what the Ben Sasse brand was at that moment.

Just tell listeners and viewers what you said in that speech, roughly.

But what would it look like?

Because what you've just described is a narrative that makes politicians seem pretty small.

And I'm sympathetic to that narrative.

But I also write about politics for a living.

I at least pretend to give advice to politicians.

You just said before that maybe you were too idealistic and needed to think more about politics.

You know, the nitty gritty of dealmaking.