In politics, you must think both long and short term to be effective. What's a good analogy for that?

Seeing the big picture?
Seeing the forest and the trees?
Thinking like a successful business man?.
Planning for today and tomorrow?
Consuming oil today but planting bioenergy crops for tomorrow?

Like a business investing heavily in R&D as well as quarterly profits.

Like a farmer planting seed; like a squirrel saving nuts for winter; like parents saving for children’s college tuition or a rainy day (all missing short term aspect though).

Perhaps the best analogy is to compare X politician with Y person who is known for doing well at it (or not).

U.S. Senator John Conness of California drafted and submitted a bill to Congress for the first ever territory set aside by Congress for public use and preservation – Yosemite. Now there is some long-term thinking for you.

Chess, some videogames, some games like Risk or Stratego.

Some sports fall into this category. Do you go for the quick point or run down the clock, for example.

I don’t accept your assumption that to be successful politicians need to think long-term. It is statesmen who think long term, not politicians.

Well for one, I said nothing about success. Success is subject to interpretation. What I did say was you have to think long and short term as a politician to be effective. You can obviously have success as a politician thinking only short term, but hey, that’s a major reason why our policies fall so short.

To be effective, politicians think short term. It’s statesmen who think long term. And you’re absolutely correct; thinking short term creates long term problems. Hence my distinction between politicians and statesmen. We have too many for the former and too few of the latter.