Mountaineers say they climb mountains because they are there, and the pinnacle (literally) is to climb Everest (Mount Qomolangma). They put a lot of training and body building hours to be fit enough to ascend, they plan for years and struggle up that mountain and if they fail they go back and finally they get to the summit and the weather is so appalling they scurry back down as soon as they can. If the weather is so inclement they can’t even take a photograph they shrug and decide to come back and try again in five years when the weather might be better. I would have planned to get some geodesic built so I could stay a week and take rock samples.
In much the same way politicians decide to run for President or Prime Minister or whatever when they are nineteen. They struggle to get political notice, they marry the right person for their job, have the right number of kids, do as many of the right things as they can for forty years and a few of them finally get elected. Years of work and striving, never stopping in their rigid determination to get to the top. And when they get there they have to stay there. They know they are going to make a mess of it but they also know they cannot leave for years.
It’s at that moment of realisation that every leader around the world thinks the same thing.
“I wish I had climbed Everest.”