Everything has a sales component, good engineering doesn't automatically sell itself. In that respect, I agree some of what's called politics here is always necessary.

On the other hand, I've worked at places where the only way to get ahead is to be a smarmy political operator and do no real work (I find this common when there is no exposure to a real market so no objective standard of what is the right direction to take). It's better to just leave such organizations.