the most insensitive politician is likely to be far more manipulative than the smoothest political operator in database administration

I think this is a slightly misleading way of putting it, for a couple of reasons. I would expect the average political skill level among full-time politicians to be pretty high, but mostly because politics is almost as high-variance a career path as writing or music: for every full-time legislator or lobbyist, there are dozens, maybe hundreds, of low-level organizers, party functionaries, and so forth, all the way down to campaign workers and school board members. It's just that most of the lower-level people in politics are doing it as a hobby or sideline, and getting paid part-time if at all, just like most musicians have day jobs.

Also, I think you're probably underestimating the amount of political skill that can be applied to technical jobs -- though many people with more political than technical savvy drift into management at some point.