Electing an Agenda

Lately I’ve been listening to speeches and appearances by Hillary Clinton.  Most people already know her politics and her platform is not what I want to discuss.  I just wanted to point out something that she said in one of her appearances that I think really says everything you need to know abut Hillary when it comes time for primaries and the general election only a short 18 months away:

We tried to convince the country and the congress… well, we convinced the country, but we didn’t convince the congress, that we needed, for the sake of our country, to move toward and achieve universal healthcare coverage.  Now, I’m proud we tried.  We may not have succeeded, but we have set the groundwork in place.  And now people are saying, “boy, we wish we had done that back then.”

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/video/20.aspx

Doesn’t the notion of an elected official convincing the country and the congress to adopt her position on an issue strike you as perverse?  Why do I need to be convinced?  The problem I have with that notion is that by the time a politician is in office, they shouldn’t be pitching new ideas to me, they should be implementing the ideas they already talked about during their campaign, before I elected them.

The real issue, though, is why I need to be convinced in the first place.  The hallmark of a good idea is that it stands by itself without supporting arguments.  The better an idea is, the easier people will be convinced.  Hillary probably considers her ability to convince the plebeian American public about universal healthcare to be her crowning achievement.  But the sad truth that she, and so many others like her, will never understand that if you have to convince someone to go along with your idea, chances are your idea isn’t all that great.

Keep this in mind when you’re listening to politicians over the next 18 months.  If their ideas don’t instantly sound right to you, chances are your vote would be better cast somewhere else.  Trust your gut.  Don’t vote for someone who is going to spend 4 or 8 years convincing you to follow her agenda.