But, because of Bernie Sanders, he was not there.

Instead of being inside the sprawling Pentagon complex when a hijacked airliner slammed into the building, Bereuter needed to chair a House subcommittee meeting that had been rescheduled from the day before because Sanders, then a House member from Vermont, missed his flight to Washington.

Bereuter, Nebraska's 1st District congressman at the time, was chairman of a House Financial Services Committee subcommittee and Sanders, now a presidential candidate, was its ranking Democratic member.

"After our meeting, I walked upstairs to my office," Bereuter said in a phone conversation last week. "And my staff told me a plane had just hit a World Trade Center tower."

Bereuter was watching on TV in his office when the second tower was hit.

"I said: 'This is a terrorist attack, turn off the coffee pot, get your car keys and we're outta here,'" Bereuter recalled.

"We back-staircased our way to Triangle Park."

Forty-five minutes later when orders were delivered to leave Capitol Hill, Bereuter's car was third down the ramp.

"A TV news crew was standing on the overpass near the Pentagon shooting pictures of the burning wreckage," Bereuter said. "As I headed home, fire trucks were coming down my side of the road."

Had he been there as scheduled, he said, he would have been on the other side of the Pentagon from where the airliner struck.

Bereuter is a historic figure in Nebraska, the state's longest-serving House member, a congressman from 1979 to 2004.

***

Ernie Chambers is on Politico's Top 50 list of "thinkers, doers and visionaries transforming American politics."

Chambers was cited for "killing the death penalty in a red state."

It was fascinating to see how Chambers reacted to the Legislature's decision to override Gov. Pete Ricketts' veto on that dramatic day in late May.

At the end, he spoke on a point of personal privilege to "express deep appreciation for those who voted and that's all that I intend to say. Thank you very much."

No celebration.

Probably because he believes he has much more work to do. 

***

This is a little speculative.

No, actually, it's a lot speculative. 

There are various ways of trying to measure how much Nebraska has moved right-of-center in the last decade or so.

Bob Kerrey and Chuck Hagel were Nebraska's two senators in 2000; Hagel and Ben Nelson were the senators as recently as 2008.

Hagel was succeeded by Mike Johanns, then by Ben Sasse. Nelson was succeeded by Deb Fischer. All of that is a march to the right.

Here's the speculative part.

Nebraska's five-member congressional delegation cast all its votes against the proposed Iran nuclear deal in the form of one motion or another, but in 2000 and 2008 there might have been a couple of votes in favor of the agreement.

In 2004, there might even have been three Nebraska votes in support of the treaty. That was Bereuter's last year in the House.

Bereuter was a senior member of the International Relations Committee, vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee and the man credited by former Secretary of State Colin Powell with crafting the key amendment that led to House approval of permanent normal trade relations with China.

We'll never know how Nelson, Hagel, Kerrey and Bereuter might have voted on the Iran deal, but they were independent guys who often chose a separate course.

Finishing up:

* Showtime: The next Republican presidential debate is Wednesday on CNN. At the center of the stage, both physically and figuratively, will be the celebrity candidate. Protective gear recommended.

* Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley, former governor of Maryland, will headline a Nebraska Democratic Party event in Omaha on Oct. 29.

* Was that Ben Sasse hawking Runzas at the Husker game on Saturday night? Yep, walking up the stadium steps where he used to sell soda pop when he was a kid.

* Big opportunity ahead in Miami. What positive vibes could come out of that, perhaps even shaping a season.