"Technocrat", "gravitas" and "pushing the enevolpe" are all common English language words or idioms. "Pushing the envelope" sounds a little quaint to my ears.
"Gravitas" reminds me of when George Bush I complained that Clinton's saxophone-playing on MTV was "unPresidential". What he meant was it lacked gravitas (and I agree).
"Technocrat" is very commonly used to describe academics who are put into power, lacking political instincts. See "Super Mario", Prime minister of Italy, for an example of a successful technocrat.
I get more annoyed by silly terms like "hot-tubbing" (putting several experts into a room to be questioned on their divergant views), and euphemistic terms which obscure hard truths, like "friendly fire" (killed by your own forces), and "collateral damage" (deaths to innocent civilians), and acronyms like "GFC" (global financial crisis) which dilute the full measure of what it is (no one describes the life-ruining "Great Depression" as the "GD").
