Over the past year, the Republican Party has struggled to choose between various nominees who have bombarded the American citizens with empty campaign slogans that demonstrate that they are the least qualified people for the most important and influential job in the country, perhaps the world. On the other hand, the Democrats have united to nominate, as President Obama testified, the most qualified person to be the President of the United States. It just so happens that she would also be the first woman President of the United States.

Hillary Clinton is not a newcomer to the American political scene. Having been First Lady for eight years, she has an unique perspective on how to efficiently run the country. Even without her experience in the White House, Clinton is more than qualified.

A graduate of Wellesley College and Yale Law School, Clinton worked for three presidential campaigns, including Jimmy Carter’s, as a young adult. She then served as a congressional legal counsel during the Watergate scandal. After President Nixon resigned, she moved to Arkansas where she taught at the University of Arkansas law school.

As First Lady of Arkansas, Clinton chaired the Arkansas Educational Standards Committee and co-founded Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families. After eight years as First Lady of the United States, Clinton was elected as United States Senator from New York.

President Obama nominated Clinton to be Secretary of State, a position she held for eight years. Her diplomatic successes in confronting the challenges our nation faced across the globe in recent years definitely proves that she understands foreign policy, which is essential for the President to master.

Despite this wide experience and incredible credentials, Clinton’s friends and family say that the principal motivation of her life has been to serve others and that she will never lose sight of who she is fighting for and what is at stake. Clinton’s mother, Dorothy, was orphaned as a young child. This drove Hillary to enter public service and is a major reason she continues today to work to improve the lives of all Americans.  

A major difference between the political parties’ candidates is that the Democratic nominee has a plausible agenda and plans to make the lives of American citizens better, while the Republican nominee has ill-conceived and impractical proposals that would harm our economy, still in recovery from the recession of 2008, and turn our “country made of immigrants” on its head, by deporting 11 million people, most of whom have families and jobs.

“We have to heal the divides in our country,” Clinton said. “Not just on guns, but on race, immigration, and more. That starts with listening to each other. Hearing each other. Trying, as best we can, to walk in each other’s shoes.”

Regarding the Republicans’ continued obsession with the matter of Clinton’s State Department email, she was urged by her predecessor to use her personal email account for non-confidential information while she was secretary of state. As Clinton recently said, this, along with attacks over Benghazi, are the ammo the GOP is continuously using to attempt to weaken her campaign.

If you watched any of the Republican National Convention in July, you will have heard a terribly pessimistic, pinched view of the future of the United States. With no real solutions presented, the convention merely spread blame and hate on the leaders of our country. This portrayal is not particularly conservative, nor Republican, and it’s certainly not American.

“Don’t let anyone ever tell you that this country is not great,” First Lady Michelle Obama said.  “That somehow we need to make it great again. Because this right now is the greatest country on Earth.”

If you are of voting age as this election approaches, there is a clear choice between one candidate with wide experience and the determination to improve the lives of the American people and another who is a racist and offensive candidate. Help shatter the glass ceiling.

“Little girls should grow up in a country where they can be anything they want to be–even President of the United States,” Clinton said.