In making the final choice in a hiring, the smartest employers look not just to the present, but also to the future. What can the applicant achieve four or five years from now? What is the potential? When the Warriors drafted Stephen Curry in 2009, they bet on the future.

That argument about vision, about potential, is my favorite reason for believing that a vote for Ro Khanna over Mike Honda in their congressional rematch is close to a dunk shot from a 7-foot ladder.

Sure, there are other reasons for ousting the incumbent: Honda fell asleep during a Homeland Security debate on the House floor. He was the target of an ethics investigation that concluded there was reason to believe he broke House rules against mixing his campaign and office.

And now, when you give to Honda, you have to ask a question: Am I writing a check to his campaign or to his legal defense fund? To defend himself on the ethics charges, Honda has started a separate money-raising operation.

Ideas

The big reason to vote for Khanna as the representative of Silicon Valley, however, is that he is that rare politician, someone comfortable with ideas. If he can navigate the rocks of Congress, he has a chance to become the Democratic answer to House Speaker Paul Ryan.

You may know a little of the pedigree of the 39-year-old candidate: honors grad of the University of Chicago, Yale Law School, a stint in the U.S. Commerce Department in the Obama administration, a lawyer at Wilson Sonsini, a lecturer at Stanford, author of a book on American competitiveness. (Unusual among American politicians, Khanna writes very well.)

Partly because of that Chicago background, he can make a case for expanding the earned income tax credit, or negative income tax, an idea first championed by Milton Friedman and James Tobin, two economists on the opposite sides of the political spectrum. Khanna can talk knowledgeably about the economists that Ryan claims as influences.

Basic income

“I get that people think that ideas don’t matter, but they do,” says Khanna. “I can go to liberals and say, ‘At a time when machines are replacing low- and middle-income workers, we want there to be an incentive to get people to a basic income.’ “

Khanna has plenty of other ideas: universal preschool, college that could be paid back as part of income, greater antitrust enforcement, more investment in science and education. Not all of these — maybe none of them — will happen. The odds are still heavily against a Democratic freshman in a Republican house.

But the most important thing is that Khanna has the ideas at all. “My sense is that there is a stagnancy in the way that the Democratic Party is talking about ideas,” he told me. “I’m not saying all my ideas are right. But there has to be a creativity and intellectual flexibility.”

I don’t mean by all this that Honda, a man of real compassion, is bereft of ideas. While I couldn’t get an immediate comment from the campaign, I recently exchanged emails with a thoughtful local Democrat who is backing the 74-year-old Honda.

“Ro might indeed make a competent congressman someday (perhaps after gaining some actual legislative experience),” he wrote me, “but I have yet to hear any compelling reasons to unseat a long-serving, proven progressive.”

This is kind of thinking that would have urged the Warriors to keep fan favorite Monta Ellis in 2012 rather than trading him to make way for the Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson show. Even if you’re not a basketball fan, you get the analogy. In the 17th Congressional District, the bet this year is on the future, not the past.

Contact Scott Herhold at 408-275-0917 or sherhold@mercurynews.com. Follow him at Twitter.com/scottherhold.