You need to extend your analogy. If you note that almost all successful bull riders adopt that pose, you have VERY strong evidence. If you only see one, there are plenty of other possibilities (blind luck, some other attribute or technique you didn’t notice). If you see many successful riders with widely varying styles, that’s fairly strong evidence AGAINST that technique being the critical element of success.
Likewise with politicians—there are similarities and differences among successful politicians, and many non-successful politicians that share some of those traits which appear important at first. It’s not obvious, even to them, which of their behaviors or traits are actually causing their success.
You need to extend your analogy. If you note that almost all successful bull riders adopt that pose, you have VERY strong evidence. If you only see one, there are plenty of other possibilities (blind luck, some other attribute or technique you didn’t notice). If you see many successful riders with widely varying styles, that’s fairly strong evidence AGAINST that technique being the critical element of success.
Likewise with politicians—there are similarities and differences among successful politicians, and many non-successful politicians that share some of those traits which appear important at first. It’s not obvious, even to them, which of their behaviors or traits are actually causing their success.
Indeed, a lot of the most ridiculous human behavior is non-experts mimicking experts randomly and picking the wrong attributes.