By Our Ideals

As the Trump administration ends and with it the tenure of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, I’d like to share an anecdote with you both for its own sake and for the larger point it will make about the nature of our nation and the road ahead.

In August 2018, Pompeo visited Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to meet with new (again) Prime Minister Mahathir. I was Consul General at the U.S. Embassy at the time and was asked to manage the “Meet & Greet,” a goodwill event for the Embassy community at which the Secretary expresses his appreciation for the work of the mission and makes a few comments about the bilateral relationship. It was scheduled for 0700 hours, and people were strongly encouraged to attend — a “command performance,” we call it. You can imagine how much fun it was to be there with small children at that hour.

At any rate, the Secretary’s advance team advised me that Pompeo liked to take questions, and that he liked thoughtful, sophisticated questions. Well, they had obviously never met me and should have been a little more careful what they wished for. I took it seriously and came loaded for bear. I wrote the questions myself, planted them with intrepid colleagues in the audience, and asked the opener personally.

“Mr. Secretary, in recent years we’ve faced a real challenge battling a narrative that the United States, once viewed as a haven for the poor and oppressed of the world looking for opportunity, has become hostile toward immigrants, refugees, and asylees. How concerned are you about this perception, and how do you answer that criticism?”

Pompeo smirked. I’m accused of editorializing in my political reporting, so I should say he looked me in the eye and replied. But I was a consular officer who spent countless hours at visa interview windows looking for subtle clues in facial expressions — fear, surprise, happiness, disdain.

Pompeo smirked.

He then launched into an explanation that he was completely unconcerned with the criticism, because even at reduced numbers, the United States still admitted more refugees than any other nation in the world, even when accounting for differences in scale of population. America is still the safe haven it has always been.

The fact is that for 2018, the year in which I asked my question of Pompeo, the United States admitted only a smidge over 22,000 refugees, about half of the cap of 45,000 set at the beginning of the fiscal year. To give you a sense of perspective, that number was down from 53,000 in 2017. Every year in the decade before that ranged from about 56,000–75,000.

But numbers aside, it was the tack he took in answering the question that was all wrong.

There is something here that he either ignored or deliberately dismissed, and it’s this:

America has never gauged its greatness by how it measures up against other countries; it measures itself by how faithful it has been to its ideals. It’s not enough for us to be better than other nations. We aim higher than that.

As we put the Trump era in the rear view mirror, let’s keep that firmly in view.