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What are the pros and cons of incumbency?
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Incumbency offers advantages such as increased power through seniority, name recognition, media access, and funding for re-election campaigns. Incumbents can leverage these benefits to gain influence and support. However, downsides include becoming out of touch with constituents, reliance on corporate donors, and voter fatigue. Familiarity can lead to contempt if the public desires change, and a negative track record can be exploited by opponents. Stability and experience must be balanced with responsiveness to change.
If we look at incumbency from the point of view of the electorate, an advantage to repeatedly reelecting the same official is that this individual will eventually gain more and more power through seniority. This power can be used to help incumbents in the home district.
On the other hand, incumbents can get stale and entrenched. They can become too aligned with their corporate donors and stop paying enough attention to the desires of their constituents, especially if they can take reelection for granted in a district that is heavily weighted in favor of their party. Incumbents can also get entrenched in one way of thinking about problems and not be sensitive to new ideas or to changes in the air.
Stability brought about by long incumbency can be useful because of the access to power it brings, but if elected officials become too out of touch with the electorate...
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it is often time for a change and some fresh blood.
The chief advantage of incumbency is that of name recognition. An incumbent running for re-election no longer has to go through the long, arduous, expensive business of trying to establish their name in the public eye. During their time in office, incumbents have constant access to the media, giving them the opportunity to get their message out and to justify their positions on the political issues of the day. As elected officials they're also entitled to a substantial grant of tax dollars to help them communicate with their constituents.
It's often been said that money is the mother's milk of American politics. Being an incumbent gives you easier access to the funds necessary to carry out a re-election campaign. Potential donors no longer feel that they are taking a chance on a rookie candidate; now they're backing someone who's already been tried and tested in the bear pit of political life.
As to the disadvantages, well name recognition is a double-edged sword. Lots of people may know all about you, but familiarity breeds contempt, as they say. Once an elected official has gained a particularly negative public image, then it's nigh impossible for them to change perceptions. If there's a desire among the electorate for something new, then an incumbent can look decidedly old hat.
A negative track record is also a disadvantage. Your opponents can go through your policy statements and votes with a fine tooth-comb, highlighting anything they think can be used to undermine you.
Voter fatigue is another potential pitfall for an incumbent. If the economy's in trouble, or if there's a general sense that the country's going in the wrong direction, then incumbents are particularly vulnerable to a public backlash. They're part of the political establishment, and as such the voters might very well be keen to give them a bit of a kicking come election day. The word "new" is one of the oldest in politics, and when there's a sea change in the air, it's pretty hard for incumbents to do anything about it, despite their manifest advantages.