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Friday, I beat him to the Court Diner in Media for our 11 a.m. get-together. I got a call from his scheduler that he was running three minutes late. Very considerate!
He walked in alone, smiled when he saw me and charged over to the table in a "damn the torpedoes" sort of way. He was eager to talk about his ideas for the district, about the people he’d met and listened to concerning the challenges facing the region and what could be done to make it a better place to live.
In the aftermath of the election, it had been his idea to call Sexton, Springfield’s outgoing GOP boss and Weldon’s campaign manager and friend for 30 years, and ask for a get-together.
Sexton is under investigation by the Justice Department for possibly benefiting financially from his close relationship with Weldon. That investigation, which included an FBI raid on Sexton’s house three weeks before the election, helped Sestak get elected.
But Sexton’s legal troubles didn’t stop Sestak from calling him and asking for an audience.
"He’s a good man," Sestak said of Sexton, an assessment not commonly held by local Democrats. But it says something about Sestak -- that he is willing to put aside party and political differences to get things done.
"We are going to be open to working with you," is the message he wanted to convey to Republican leaders.
He talked about building a stronger economic base, attracting new businesses and reforming education and health care.
"I don’t have to know everything," he said. But the one thing he knows about is "bringing people together to work on" plans and policies to help the district and the nation.
He mentions the Gateway Project in Upper Darby and the county’s Renaissance program, the airport redesign and the regional storm water management problem.
Even about those things he oozes enthusiasm. He seems to want to help figure out solutions to every problem facing America from education to health care to national security.
"People appreciate competence," he says. And if you get people together thinking about a problem, "common sense prevails in the majority of cases."
But not, in his view, when it came to going to war in Iraq.
During the campaign, he called Iraq a "tragic misadventure."
I asked him if he thought the war was "doomed from the start" or if it was "mishandled" into a "misadventure."
"I think it was the wrong decision at the wrong time," he replied. "But not even I thought it would be as bad as this."
He added that "militarily it could have been done to a greater success" if, as Gen. Eric Shinseki had suggested, we had gone in with more troops and hadn’t disbanded the Iraqi military.
Besides, he said, "I never thought (Iraq) was a clear and present danger..I never believed the center of gravity (of our security concerns) was in the Middle East."
Asia, he said, is where we ought to be focusing our attention, and specifically, China.
"We had it right in Afghanistan.. he said, but fighting two wars at once has left the "Army broken." Every day we are in Iraq America’s security "becomes less."
"If we cannot control the sectarian violence, civil war, whatever you want to call it, do you think the Iraqi Army can? ..We can’t do it. They can’t do it. How long do we stay there and hurt our overall security?"
Now we have Iran to deal with.
"We cannot permit them to have a nuclear weapon," Sestak says. And on North Korea, "we have outsourced our leadership to the Chinese." (In my view, outsourcing in this case is not a bad thing.)
For all these reasons, he says, we have to set a "deliberate timetable" for our withdrawal in Iraq that tells the government there "we are not kidding," and have them take over the defense of their own country.
"We blew this! We blew this!" he says.
Then he looks at me earnestly.
"I haven’t convinced you, have I?" he asks.
"No," I tell him.
But he makes a fair argument.
More about our new Congressman-elect Friday..
Gil Spencer’s column appears Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at gspencer@delcotimes.com