We’re Entering an Era of One-Term Presidents
Disruption may have reached all the way to our highest office
The incumbency advantage makes sense. My wife is more likely to have sex with me than my next-door neighbors, only partly because they are very old and very gay. Medium probably won’t replace me with a far better columnist next week because that would upset tens of readers.
This is because of a psychological phenomenon called “people don’t like change.” And it holds true across human behavior.
Until it doesn’t.
When people are unhappy for long periods, they get divorced, quit their jobs, try drugs, exchange their money for imaginary digital currencies, and vote out the bastards in charge.
From the 1940s to 2000, incumbents in American elections at all levels had a huge and ever-growing advantage — rising to around 8 percent. When I spoke to George Clooney in November of 2020 about the presidential election results — which I mention not simply to make me look important because I talk to Clooney but because he is a political expert whom I happen to talk to — he said, “I was surprised by how hard it is to beat an incumbent. I’d forgot that the actual power of the presidency is worth two or three percent.” In Aaron Sorkin’s movie The American President, he calls it “the…
