two aspects of successful politics

There are at least two different notions of success in the political system of the EU. One kind is more “political” and media/attention savvy, the other is more “policy-oriented” and results-focused. What does this mean?
Politicians need successes to justify their work. Either those successes come from long-term developments e.g. the results of an implemented policy or from short term attention in the media or among political elites. The problem is that timelines are not necessarily fair, meaning a policy built and implemented under a certain politicians watch may well deliver its success-results to the politician’s successor. Thus, politicians have to make sure that they get successes in their term of office.
Policy-makers on the other hand depend on long term successes to proof their competence and to underpin their reputations. Certainly the underlying social process does not involve the same kind of people, e.g. only experts in a certain policy field can assess a policy-maker’s reputation and only if they know the field long enough to oversee the policy making timeline. In order to safeguard such a long term approach to success-results, led victories are to be exploited or can even be seen only in hindsight.
Therefore: the difference between success-result timelines complicates the relationship between the political and the administrative level in the COM.