Margaret Thatcher was famous for her insistence that officials condense any report she had to read into two pages and dare I mention Ronald Regan's attention span.

There is nothing more "smarmier" than a right of centre self-made man/woman who then enters parliament a la John Banks, Paula Bennett and ACT MPs. They seem to think that a) everyone can/should emulate their achievements and b) they have a superior world view and c) tend to (maybe unconsciously) disenfranchise those very same groups from whence they came, for not emulating them.