I've been studying U.S. history since I was about four, and I'm always learning something new. Yesterday, I stumbled across a story about an American President who I'd grown up despising and deriding, and what I read didn't just change my opinion of the man; it gave me chills. So I'm going to share my personally electrifying discovery with the three of you reading this thing. The time is the summer of 1979. The president was Jimmy Carter. While it was an unpleasant time to be an American, it was far worse to be Vietnamese. While in the U.S. there were gas shortages, debilitating inflation, and rising unemployment, in Vietnam there was apparently something far worse in progress under the new Communist regime. So terrible, in fact, that hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese were changing their residence by sailing away from the Marxist utopia that was Vietnam. These "Boat People" were enduring every conceivable manner of horror to get pretty much anywhere that was not Communist Vietnam. Their top choice was generally their comer ally, the U.S. Nobody had witnessed such an exodus from Vietnam during the Vietnam War, when more bombs were dropped on Vietnam than during the entirety of World War II. There must have been something about that Communist regime that got two million people doing a Magellan-in-reverse, but that's a subject for another blog. The Boat People suffered on a biblical level to escape Communism and get to the U.S. Many were perishing in the Pacific during their nautical exodus. The magnitude of their desperation, however, was lost on the vast majority of the American people during that summer of 1979. A New York Times poll from the time showed that 62% of Americans opposed admitting more Vietnamese refugees to the U.S., a proportion far greater than those opposing admission of Syrian refugees to the U.S. in 2016. Which brings us to the president, Jimmy Carter. Carter's approval rating that summer of '79 had just clocked in at a lowly 28%, and his own party was eyeing a revival of Camelot for the 1980 election. Presidents with far greater popularity (say, F.D.R.) had turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the plight of refugees in their day. But Jimmy Carter was convinced that like the Blues Brothers, he was on a mission from God. And while that sanctimony could be homicidally annoying when he was telling us to turn down the thermostat and put on another sweater, the pious preacher from Plains was going to step up for The Boat People in a way that should have earned him a really quality statue, eternally free of bird droppings. Defying the admonitions of the public and many in his own party (then California Governor Jerry Brown had staunchly opposed admitting Vietnamese refugees to the U.S., especially his state), Carter not only admitted Boat People refugees to the U.S., he ordered the number admitted to be DOUBLED. He then strode out of the White House on the afternoon of July 6, 1979, walked across the lawn to the fence where protestors on behalf of the Vietnamese refugees had gathered, reached through the fence and clasping the hands of the protestors declared, "I will not let your people die." That's not just a moment worthy of Hollywood. That's a scene that could have vaulted out of The Old Testament. Or The New Testament. He then walked back inside the White House and ordered The Seventh Fleet to PICK UP the Boat People struggling to escape Vietnam by sea. Jimmy Carter didn't have to do any of that. An already unpopular president might well have dodged the refugee issue entirely and spared himself almost certain risk. Carter defied popular will and political pressure to help an unpopular and powerless group of people in their hour of most extreme need. He exhibited the bravery of a REAL Commander-in-Chief, and in this week that began with the annual rankings of the presidents, it would be fitting, if unlikely, that we consider such uncommon courage as criteria for our accolades.
