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Yeah I struggled with that one. I think that's one question where my phrasing isn't very helpful. Like, are candidates very prideful and ambitious? Obviously yes. But does it make sense to ask whether candidates run on pride or ambition as a major, primary factor, or is it just background or a catalyst for other reasons? I sorta imagined the question getting at the former, but maybe it's not a useful or informative question to ask (what does running on ambition alone even mean? I guess there's sort of 100% overlap with the other categories, perhaps)
One interesting distinction I've heard is "being ambitious" vs. "having an ambition".
A person who is being ambitious might do well in school, put together a good college application, do well in college, put together a good job application, do well at their job, put together a good promotion application, etc. then end up as a multimillionaire CEO/partner/senator/other-0.01%er. They follow the predefined "ambitious" path, reach elite status, and kind of just do normal stuff.
A person who has an ambition starts with an audacious goal (develop a martian colony, change society on a constitutionally-relevant level, break an Olympic record, etc), organizes their life to achieve that goal, and blasts past obstacles that would stop any reasonable person.
Under that framing, a politician who is running on ambition alone ("being ambitious") would be a person who follows the straight line to power/money/status and ends up in government.
This is a commonly overlooked distinction, and good on you for remembering it. That conceptual space of [Having an Ambition] is often what overlaps with [Ideology], as the nature of having a goal to work towards often depends on not only the interests behind the person, but the entire framework that leads them to the conclusion that the objective is worth focusing on above more 'reasonable' things, which is also what gets them critical enablers / associates who empower this. This [Ideology] could be religious or secular, but it serves as a framework for consolidating the [Having an Ambition], as well as a legitimization and cooperation-enabling framework to enable action.
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