> All this machiavellian stuff is definitely effective for people in power. As an engineer by trade who turned to politics and government for a while, I find y

> All this machiavellian stuff is definitely effective for people in power. As an engineer by trade who turned to politics and government for a while, I find your perspective very simplistic. People are hardwired to seek recognition and social respect - also known as "power" - and build hierarchies around it. Politics exists in every profession and walk of life, as soon as you have people trying to achieve some common goal, you will have competition for decision making. In professional politics, the grab for power is naked and participants understands the game, so the field tends to attract sociopaths effective at persuading others. That's all a good politician does at the end of the day, convinces people around them that acting in the interest of the politician is good for them too. Professionals cannot afford the luxury of ideology or vision, since any effort earnestly spent on those is time not spent furthering their own power, a weakness a better politician will surely exploit. Politicians will claim values and virtues, they will fish around in society for popular themes they can champion to increase their reach, but the only real project of any successful politician is themselves. In other fields, reality tends to get in the way of pure politics, and you can't talk your way out of a brain surgery or spaghetti codebase. This tends to leave many naive people with the impression that politics is marginal and things are decided on technical merit, personal talent, work etc. This is not the case. Every CEO, inventor, Nobel-prize winner, famous author and journalist is first and foremost a skilled politician. They were able to convince others to work in their lab or company, to publish them, to fund them, to support and promote them. Every step on the ladder to greatness required accumulating some form of political power - get a well funded lab supporting their research, an investment, a scholarship, a small team of friends to work on their idea. At every step they competed with other politicians aiming for the same resources, because nobody can make it alone, and everyone would like an army supporting their own dreams. And throughout this process, successful climbers distributed booty to their supporters to keep them on their side. Politics is not just for rulers, it's for anyone who wants to matter in any sense in society.