The Incumbency Advantage ... August 2020

Elections are meant to be fair - in that, a member of an informed and aware electorate does an apples-to-apples comparison of all candidates and chooses the candidate (s)he determines to be the best. The unquantifiable metric is/ should be what the candidate's potential is in the ensuing term. In a functional democracy, the collective actions of all such voters determines the election winner.

While the same caveat that we apply to stocks applies to political candidates - past performance is no guarantee of future performance - the electorate cannot disregard what I call "the incumbency bias". Just like in sports - white is supposed to have a natural advantage over black in chess, because white moves first (and becomes a sort-of incumbent); the player with the serve has an advantage over the served in tennis (not surprisingly, a scoring state is also called "advantage") - the political incumbent has an enormous advantage in several ways.

First, (s)he has had the power to execute recent actions - and, the memory of the electorate is always short-term. If these actions are touted as good, and the electorate drinks the kool-aid, the incumbent can show recent results that the non-incumbent cannot.

Second, (s)he can push the limits on the norm and use tax-payer resources to push the election campaign. Most candidates will remain just under the radar screen that it is difficult for someone to raise the ethics and legal issue. Some candidates and their supporters, as we see with the upcoming US Presidential election, blatantly cross the line and challenge anyone to challenge them. The pardoning of a prisoner, the administration of citizenship oath to some immigrants interspersed with the Republican National Convention are examples of such abuse. I am sure we will be seeing more of this in the next couple of months.

Crying foul is easy, but does not help. Legal recourse is too long-drawn and it is not even certain that the situation can be conclusively proven to have crossed the line of legality. The best recourse for the electorate is to be able to see through the drama on stage, and recognize that watching a movie does not alter the reality that the spectator goes back to.

Most importantly, the electorate needs to look at the "stock potential" regardless of whether the stock has been in a favorable setting in the last 3.5 years to demonstrate performance. And, then, buy the stock that has the best future performance potential. In the political scene, the stock to buy is one that will (a) constructively address race relations, (b) adopt a scientific (and not a knee-jerk) approach to address the pandemic, (c) re-establish of the nation's position in the world order, (d) uplift the socially and economically disadvantaged and the neglected, ...

The choice of the ballot is more than obvious!