Ed Gillespie on Foreign Policy

Emphasize American exceptionalism; a force for good in world

1984: Threat of Communism drove me to Reagan

And yet, I related much more to Ronald Reagan in 1984 than to Walter Mondale. The threat of communism and its oppression of the Catholic faith drove much of my perspective. As a child sitting in the pews of St. Ann's in the Pines, I would hear occasional Sunday pleas from the pulpit to pray for the Catholics trapped behind the Iron Curtain. As early as 8th grade, I had written an essay on the threat posed by the spread of communism. One of my favorite books as a teenager as "The Jesuit," a fictional thriller about a priest organizing underground masses in the old Soviet Union, and I found Pope John Paul II's rise from communism Poland to the chair of St. Peter inspirational.