Quotes About Incumbents

Incumbents are admittedly iterating on the friction, but have to butt up against compliance, legal and risk departments constantly trying to retain as much of the friction as possible. It takes a really strong CEO and executive team to reform that systemic thinking.

The dominant pattern of history isn't stability, but instability; the dominant pattern of business isn't perpetuation of the incumbents, but triumph of the insurgents; the dominant pattern of capitalism isn't equilibrium, but what Joseph Schumpeter famously described as the "perennial gale of creative destruction

In sustaining circumstances—when the race entails making better products that can be sold for more money to attractive customers—we found that incumbents almost always prevail. In disruptive circumstances—when the challenge is to commercialize a simpler, more convenient product that sells for less money and appeals to a new or unattractive customer set—the entrants are likely to beat the incumbents.

In fact, corporate and union moneys go overwhelmingly to incumbents, so limiting that money, as Congress did in the campaign finance law, may be the single most self-denying thing that Congress has ever done.

Congress is unpopular. Incumbents are unpopular.

Incumbents have long promoted regulation in the name of protecting consumers when their actual goal is to block new entrants and stifle competition.

Further-more, partisan attachments powerfully shape political perceptions, beliefs and values, and incumbents enjoy advantages well beyond the way in which their districts are configured.

For all the manufactured 'Republican versus Democrat' drama that dominates today's cable news and political rhetoric, the most striking feature of our present-day democracy is not partisan divide - it's a corrupt system that protects incumbents from the consequences that real democracy brings.

Redistricting is a deeply political process, with incumbents actively seeking to minimize the risk to themselves (via bipartisan gerrymanders) or to gain additional seats for their party (via partisan gerrymanders).

As long as the appointment process is transparent and there is a broad mix of political views among the governors of the BBC, I think the public can feel confident that impartiality and independence are just as important to me as they have been to previous incumbents.

Large incumbents become big and sometimes become lazy and set themselves up for failure in the future.

As constituents, we've become lazy in terms of what we want and how to get it. If we, as a constituency, don't like what Congress is doing, but 90 percent of incumbents get reelected every year, that's a problem.

The Republican Party's gerrymandering efforts were also having unintended consequences. For years the party had poured resources into state legislatures in order to redraw congressional districts and lock in Republican control. But this strategy also left incumbents susceptible to primary challenges by candidates who were more radical than they themselves were and who had their pick of billionaires to fund their campaigns.

Power becomes entrenched as a result of barriers that shield incumbents from rivals.