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>> Nine times out of ten, a member of Congress will get re-elected.
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>> Okay, let's discuss the term incumbent.
Professor Mullins, you get to define that term for our students today. What is an
incumbent? >> Well, an incumbent is a term describing
the current holder of some
elected office or a political position.
It's basically a sitting politician. >> All right, so what we're talking about here
like who is your current member of Congress,
who's the current president, uh... who's a current State Senator, I mean, so just
people who are
basically in power right now.
>> Correct. >> All right now, Professor Reece, why is uh... incumbency and why are incumbents, in
understanding this term, important to our students? >> Yeah, there's a lot of heartburn in
the United States about incumbents. And, frankly, I don't get it
sometimes.
An imcumbent is a person... >> Is that heartburn or? >> Yeah, yeah. A lot of people have heartburn.
I mean, there's a... a lot of uh... of people doing a good job in Congress, and they
run for reelection every two years and they get elected... and they get elected because they are doing
a good job. And people get upset because they have an advantage. That's, that's that uh...
I think, the main issue.
>> You know, I get that, I agree with you. So Professor Mullins,
what's the problem with incumbency, and and what's the issue
there?
>> Well sometimes,
members of Congress, for example, are reelected just because they're already in Congress.
Their constituency only knows them by their name uh... they don't really know anything
about them or what they've done in Congress.
And so that becomes a problem where you have these career politicians,
who aren't really doing anything, they aren't really effective
uh... but they just keep getting reelected, reelected, reelected,
time and time again. For example, nine times out of ten,
uh... member of Congress will be re-elected.
>> That's right, depending on the House and Senate, the uh... I guess, the re-election rates
are very high
uh... for both, so turnover is relatively low.
But Professor Reece, I think you alluded to this, if people are getting
elected, and we live in a democracy
you know, people are getting elected by somebody for a reason,
uh... are we making a lot of noise about something that really doesn't have to be
a....
>> To a certain extent uh... this this is true Professor Mullins mentioned is
that uh... these incumbents they get stuck in office, and they can't get them out
they're entrenched, and then it's hard to hold them accountable... have all these
advantages. And so some states have passed laws which uh...
have term limits and uh... so uh... so you get the incumbents out of office.
But what that means is you eliminate a lot of expertise uh... especially in
legislatures. And then... so you have these rookies up in the State Capitol all the
time, and in that situation, interest groups also... often become very powerful.
>> Okay, now, Professor Mullins, uh... in terms of uh... if you do want unseat
an incumbent,
uh... can you give me an idea what usually brings their downfall? What
causes them to lose on occasion?
>> Usually a massive scandal or a bad economy.
Those are usually,
the end of an incumbent. >> Okay, so I guess there's something to look forward to! Okay gentlemen!
That was a good one! Thank you very much!