Being an incumbent can be a huge advantage in politics during election years, as name recognition and fundraising are smaller obstacles than for upstart opponents. Whether state legislators and Gov. Martin O’Malley find their current titles a bonus in 2010 still remains to be seen.

In June, I went on vacation to Ireland, which was holding local elections and elections for European Union representatives. The results were historic, as the leading party, Fianna Fail, was trounced throughout the country on a wave of anti-incumbent sentiment (One side note: Ireland is known for its beauty, but most campaign posters were emblazoned with a picture of the candidate, which was not a wonderful aesthetic choice).

A major beneficiary was Fine Gael, the leading opposition party. Over some conversations with taxi drivers, who are a wellspring of local information, I gleaned there are few policy differences between the two parties but many people were just sick of the guys in charge. It didn’t help, of course, that Fianna Fail had helped deregulate the taxi industry and make life a lot harder for blue-collar workers (“They should have listened to the taxi drivers,” one said, a wise statement in America as well).

How is this relevant to Maryland? Well, it demonstrates how hard it is to run for re-election when times are bad and when things got worse under your watch, even if there was little to do to prevent it. Fianna Fail probably had as much to do with the subprime mortgage crisis as a Galway sheepherder.

The calculus is a little different when there are larger gaps in policy, such as between Republicans and Democrats, but the opening is in an aspirant declaring themselves as different, but not too different; familiarity breeds both contempt and comfort.