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I don't think you're threadjacking.
It's an interesting question you ask. I really do think it is mutually exclusive in a way. I consider myself successful in a modest way--established in my career, etc. But I choose to be involved with my family and to have other interests outside of my job, and I lack a singleminded drive for domination that would lead me to aspire to be a politician or the head of a multinational corporate powerhouse. But if I were like that that's probably all I would do with my life.
If you ever looked at Bill Clinton and wondered, where is the president who can have Clinton's idealism and breadth of knowledge without his smarminess (and i don't just mean the Lewinsky business--the man is a consummate politician and I don't mean that as a favorable description). Or looked at the 2000 presidential election where a man who practically bragged about the fact that he didn't study in college and made his way through family connections won the electoral vote (and lost the popular vote) against a man who had an encyclopedic grasp of policy issues but was (or was portrayed as, doesn't matter which is true) a cold-hearted antisocial nerd, and wondered, where is the president who has a brain and also more social and political skills than a tree stump? My answer is, there are plenty of such men and women. But they're doing anything but being politicians because they've become convinced that they can't aspire to any office higher than treasurer of the Rotary Club because they'd have to compromise their principles to do so. This results in a negative feedback loop, and here we are.
Having said all that, I don't know what the best advice to give kids is. I'm telling mine to learn as much as they can, weigh their choices, and make their decisions on the basis of their own principles. I want them to have my own principles, but I can't give them to them and I can't force them to have them. They're on their own.
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