Ben Sasse appears likely to leave the U.S. Senate early to become the next president of the University of Florida.

Less than two years into his second six-year term — which he asked Nebraskans to give him in 2020 — Sasse clearly has changed his mind about serving his home state in the Senate. He is the sole finalist under consideration for the Florida job.

Everyone has the right to change jobs for something that’s better for them and their family, or to pursue a role that might let them make more of a difference. That’s true whether they hold a minimum wage job or high public office.

But Nebraskans ought to hear more from Sasse about why he is willing to quit — especially since he would leave them represented, for the next two years, by an unelected senator. The governor of Nebraska, either Pete Ricketts or his successor depending on timing, will appoint Sasse’s replacement through 2024, and a special election will determine who serves the final two years of the term.

While Sasse has publicly said little about his reasons, it’s likely that the caustic political climate and partisanship in Congress helped turn him back to academia. He earned a Ph.D. from Yale University and previously taught there and at the University of Texas at Austin. He also served as president of Midland University in Nebraska.

But politics these days can be even more discouraging. An intelligent, articulate conservative with experience as a crisis turnaround specialist, Sasse made little headway in Washington and wound up being criticized harshly by his own party — and especially by its best-known leader, former President Donald Trump.

When Sasse ran in 2014, his signature issue was opposition to Obamacare. With expertise in health policy, Sasse said he knew how to repeal and replace the health coverage program. But it never happened. Obamacare survived a GOP and Trump-backed effort to kill the program.

Sasse earned attention in 2015 when he gave a Senate speech lamenting that fellow lawmakers were not focused on the nation’s biggest challenges. He called on colleagues to hold meaningful debates and move beyond partisanship.

It’s hard to argue that things in Washington have gotten better since then.

Meanwhile, although Sasse assembled a strongly conservative voting record, he ran afoul of Trump during and after his presidency. Sasse was one of seven GOP senators to vote in favor of convicting Trump for inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.

His pro-impeachment vote stirred some Nebraska Republicans to consider censuring Sasse — just months after nearly 63% of the state’s voters had reelected him. In the end, the Nebraska GOP settled for a 2021 resolution that attacked his work as a senator, saying he wasn’t responsive to constituent calls and had a thin legislative record.

Sasse responded by saying “most Nebraskans don’t think politics should be about the weird worship of one dude.”

But the GOP message was pretty clear: Sasse couldn’t count on his party’s support in the future. During the past two years, Sasse acknowledged in a statement after his finalist status for the Florida job became public, he has been considering various job options.

The Florida news prompted a gleeful social media post by Trump, who never misses a chance for a childish insult. He said it was great that “Liddle Ben Sasse, the lightweight senator” would leave the Senate — but also predicted that the University of Florida would eventually discover that he was a poor choice.

Whether you like Sasse or not — whether you see him as an effective senator or not — that sort of mean-spirited discourse is petty and hurts our country. It detracts from our ability to come together to solve the problems of the day, and it doesn’t help bring thoughtful and talented people into politics.

It’s sad that Sasse has prompted so much hostility from some Republicans, even as many GOP leaders have lined up behind less impressive candidates like Herschel Walker, the former football star who is running as a Republican for the U.S. Senate in Georgia. Walker’s candidacy has been marked by confusing, meandering speeches and allegations of domestic violence and having paid for abortions. Walker has denied the allegations.

Sasse told the Tampa Bay Times earlier this month that he welcomes the opportunity to step away from the political arena and instead work with “a team of big-cause, low-ego people who want to build stuff and serve students and plan for the future.”

Someday, perhaps, Sasse may be willing to tell his soon-to-be-former constituents in Nebraska what he learned in Washington about the political process — and why it was so hard to make a difference.

This editorial first appeared in the Omaha World-Herald on October 16, 2022. It was distributed by The Associated Press.