The advice that I can give anyone wanting to be in the biz: do all the work, learn your craft. There are no shortcuts. If you stay with it, you will get an opportunity. ↗
The short-term vision is: I research on something which I can use tomorrow, and for some politicians it is even better if it's today. But if you do this, you can only do targeted research. If you only do targeted research, you lose the side-routes. ↗
If I'm in a political argument, I think I can, with reasonable accuracy and without boasting, put the other person's side of the case at least as well as they could. One has to be able to say that in any well-conducted argument. ↗