With the buzz of the 2004 presidential campaigns, I became excited about casting my first vote. Immediately I was drawn to John Kerry’s intelligence and command of the issues. I remember being extremely disappointed that he did not fight back following the Swift Boat attacks. I was thinking how can the public believe such acquisitions. The man actually went over to Vietnam and served his country. I thought, this man was just as patriotic as anyone else. It is healthy for people to have their own opinions and Kerry simply questioned the purpose and morals of the war. The other thing I could not get past was the fact that many voters expected him to have a yes/no response to the questions and issues. Many times it does in fact depend on the current environment or situation. This is probably why he was labeled a flip-flopper and not decisive enough for the public to push him over the electorate edge.

In addition to my Democratic beliefs, one of my top issues was the deficit. I wanted someone who would at least practice financial restraint and solvency. Although John Kerry probably would have raised taxes, I figured we were better off to either tax and spend, or to pursue tax cuts, but restrain spending. George Bush was and still is running our country into the ground financially. With our government running massive deficits, I could not and will not accept the fact that our nation is borrowing so much from mostly Asian countries just to keep the boat temporarily above water. I guess it take a generation to savers to produce a generation of wasters. If we are expected to balance our checkbooks, why does the government not do the same? I believe surpluses should be set aside for paying down national debts and major catastrophes/conflicts in which Americans are attacked directly. I just did not see how all our spending was being invested in producing future returns. We could have been pouring this money into research and development, pushing the technology on alternative energy, or improving our infrastructure. For example, I look at the Japanese bullet trains and even experienced the wonderful European public transportation system and think to myself, “Why are we not where we should be?”