Despite centuries of political philosophy and theory from the likes of Plato, John Stuart Mill, Niccolo Machiavelli, and Max Weber - to name but a few - the most succinct summation of politics I can think of comes to us via that noted intellectual giant Andrew Lloyd Webber.
In the musical Evita, which includes an odd dream-like relationship between Eva Peron and a thinly-veiled Che Guevara (yes, really), Che focuses the social-climbing Evita's ambitions when he tells her that "politics is the art of the possible".
A born showgirl, Eva interprets Che's words of wisdom as advice to promise much and deliver little, distracting the populace all the while in true panem et circenses style, touring the world in her finery while meeting with Pope and royalty, selling brand Argentina in pastures new.
Formula One and Broadway musicals may not be immediately obvious bed-fellows, but in Evita the parallels are all there: rapid transformation from minor league to global phenomenon, focusing on 'the show' over any form of substance, calculated manipulation of the media, and an instant recourse to sideshow attractions as a means of diverting attention from the real issues at hand.
F1's best Evita moments used to come courtesy of the Max n' Bernie Show, two men who had an instinctive understanding of the efficacy of smoke and mirrors applied strategically, and were never short of panem for the press and circenses for the public. Meanwhile, in the background, the pair would get on with achieving whatever it was they had set out to accomplish in that instance.
Hard as it is to imagine either Max Mosley or Bernie Ecclestone singing 'Don't Cry for Me Argentina' into a hairbrush, this week's ZDF interview was a masterclass in politics as the art of the possible.
Bemoaning the current state of F1 affairs while proposing very little in terms of realistic long-term solutions - but an awful lot of pie-in-the-sky thinking - the pair knew exactly which button to push to get the public on (their) side: Solicit fan opinion despite never once having taken fan input to heart (*cough* double-points finale *cough*)? Tick, and the public lapped it up.
Tearing up the rulebook and starting again is excellent in theory but more complicated in practice. There are many reasons that F1 currently has oceans of room for improvement, but the regulations - both sporting and technical - are affected in no small part by the teams themselves, irrespective of whether or not they belong to the F1 Strategy Group.
F1 is a sport built around regulatory grey area. Teams who push the envelope to the limit of the regulations as they are written while staying within the letter of the law are rewarded on track by whatever performance advantage it is that they have found, but will find themselves subject to complaints from rival teams, most of which result in technical directives and rule clarifications that turn a simple regulation into a multi-layered, multi-page explanation aimed at repainting the grey area either black or white.
Rewriting the rulebook isn't going to change the teams' approach to a rival having stolen the march on them, and a season of sweet simplicity will inevitably be followed by years of clarification and the resulting complexity.
Max and Bernie know that, their media consultants know it, and the teams themselves know it. But as long as F1 can sell the possibility of revolution to its target audience, the reality can always be put off another day, another season, another regulatory cycle. The best part of tomorrow is that it never really comes, no matter how many time zones you cross on your worldwide showcase-cum-sales pitch.
But the promise of the possibility of non-specific change without any form of timescale could prove to be a useful hand to play if (when?) the EU Competition Commission comes calling. Change is on its way - mañana, mañana, mañana...