Critics say that type of obsession with short-term triumphs is what has stunted long-term growth.
The only good thing that can be said is that Clegg's five-year strategy was never designed to deliver mid-term triumphs, so in that respect things are going exactly according to plan.
Nothing that follows has the same effect, though the upshot of Ultron's short-term triumph is conceptually elegant.
Republicans in Congress, fresh from a mid-term triumph, would immediately become apoplectic and probably say some daft things.
The meeting represents a short-term triumph for U.S. officials who want to conclude the trade war before economic damage spreads, including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council.
The commercial sector's interest comes as many anticipate support from the Trump administration, which is eager for a first-term triumph to rally the nation the way the Apollo flights did in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Afterwards he wrote Ingenious Pain, a book that confirmed his talent when it won the Impac prize, one of the world's biggest literary awards in financial terms, triumphing over a shortlist including books by Don DeLillo, Ian McEwan, Cynthia Ozick and Haruki Murakami.
When the Obama campaign team refused federal funding and undercut Senator McCain's efforts to establish a precedent for a campaign run only with federal funds and without funding from special interests, it was a short-term triumph for the Democrats.
However, short-term electoral triumphs for Islamists may prove a long-term pyrrhic victory.
At the age of 85, he gave the Jefferson lecture, elegantly mocking George W Bush and his spurious first term election triumph; at 87 he accepted the Jerusalem prize in a speech which denounced Israel's aggressive Gaza policy.
