But on the other, they seem so loftily contemptuous of the real-life concerns of ordinary people that they make comic misjudgments about the effects of their public pronouncements.
Against a backdrop of buildings with water lapping at their first-floor windows, she loftily declared "it would be right" to say that the flood defences were "overwhelmed".
The reality of airborne environments, suspended loftily above, amid clouds, has always inhabited our dreams but always exceeded the scope of present technologies, until the twentieth century.