Letter from Illinois - Part 3

From Joes' Letter:
We are in the unique position in this country of electing our leaders. It's a privilege to do so. I've never found a candidate in any election with whom I agreed on everything. I'll wager that most of us don't even agree with our families or spouses 100% of the time. So when I step into that voting booth, I always try to look at the big picture and cast my vote for the man or woman who is best qualified for the job. I've hired a lot of people in my lifetime, and essentially that's what an election is - a hiring process. Who has the credentials? Whom do I want working for me? Whom can I trust to do the job right?

From me:
Joe, there is nothing unique involved here. We hold elections all the time. Many other countries do also. While it is great that we do hold elections to select our leaders, it is not unique. And in this country it is a right. Now I don't want to argue about privileges and rights and responsibilities, but I think you might agree now that you've thought about it. Not a big deal.
And you're right on about agreeing with anyone 100% of the time - hey, even 50% of the time would be pretty good!
We agree on just about everything here. I've hired a lot of people too, and that is what we're doing in an election. As I mentioned before, though, we are not just hiring a person - that would be too easy. We're hiring a person with a lot of baggage, a whole party worth of baggage. So much baggage that it cannot be ignored. It has to be considered in the selection process. This is clearly different than hiring for the business - in fact, you cannot use political, religious, race, age etc., filters in making the decision for your business. But in an election all of those things are not only fair game, they are important! In business you would usually be forced to consider education as a hiring factor - in politics, apparently not so important! So I guess the bottom line is, while it is similar to hiring a worker, it isn't the same at all. The groundrules are all different.