Incumbency is a powerful advantage and nowhere more so than in Maine. In 2002, 1st District voters gave Democrat Tom Allen a large majority even as they re-elected Republican Susan Collins with a huge plurality over her accomplished Democratic opponent, Chellie Pingree. Incumbency, perhaps the sense that the occupant of the office was a trusted person, trumped major ideological differences between the candidates for a substantial portion of the Maine electorate.

For Tom Allen, hoping to unseat Collins, the power of incumbency is a challenge. Twelve years ago Collins promised she would serve only two terms, but those words will likely have little effect on voters. Some residents may support term limits in the abstract, but when it comes to someone they like they are apt to regard the invocation of such limits as unjust and undemocratic.

Allen’s best chance lies in the economic state of the nation and in the difficulties all Republicans, especially those who like Collins have consistently supported Bush’s economic policies, will have in extricating themselves from the Bush record.

Allen’s prospects depend in part on establishing clear differences between himself and Collins. In addition, however, he must persuade swing voters that this election comes at a pivotal point in our history. The next Congress will make decisions too consequential to base on personal trust in a candidate.

Though it is often too easy for the left to suggest that the sky is falling, the U.S. faces a set of interacting crises at least as serious as any in my lifetime. How these are addressed will have a major bearing on the shape of the country.

The continuing occupation of Iraq reduces our national security and threatens to leave this nation economically and politically bankrupt. The cost of the occupation, coupled with inordinate balance of trade problems, has left the U.S. economy almost as much in hock to China as Britain was to the United States after World War II. Though Allen has not always done enough to advocate ending the occupation, he has a more consistent record of opposition and can make this issue work on his behalf.

But equal emphasis needs to extend to the ways in which the Bush-McCain-Collins economic priorities both foster injustice and limit future economic development. Our debt to foreign central banks and investors has grown at a staggering rate. Basic infrastructure (roads, bridges, rail lines, and Internet access) upon which exports and economic development depend has been graded as a D-minus by leading civil engineers.

Susan Collins has been the Maine delegation’s most consistent supporter of corporate-oriented trade legislation that has left the U.S. economy so vulnerable. She has voted for lower tax rates on income from capital gains. Income that investment bankers make by crafting and selling the arcane financial products (think derivatives) which have crippled our financial system is treated more favorably than the wages of electricians, plumbers or engineers.

Collins has supported tax favors to oil companies while opposing labor law reforms that would put workers on a more even playing field with their corporate bosses. She has also supported permanent repeal of all estate taxes. Such a policy agenda both exacerbates gaping economic inequality and reduces the revenues needed to modernize the infrastructure. Allen supports tax policies that redress the injustices of the Bush era as well as revisions of trade treaties and labor reforms to restore worker rights.

Conservatives argue that existing inequality reflects the distribution of talent, is an incentive for hard work, and stimulates growth. Yet much current wealth is a result of speculative excesses and crude political favors that destroy the wealth of ordinary citizens. Recent trade treaties privilege corporate patents and copyrights over labor rights. Government research and development is often provided free to the corporate sector, and corporate governance privileges management at the expense of workers and even stockholders. Refusal to tax estates created by such injustices is both wrong and deprives government of the resources to modernize schools and the transit and energy systems on which equal opportunity and future prosperity depend.

Susan Collins is a public servant of impeccable integrity, but so is Tom Allen. The stakes this November are too important to base on anything other than the substantial differences between the candidates.

John Buell is a political economist who lives in Southwest Harbor. Readers may reach him at jbuell@acadia.net.