Interesting thought for the day, Tony. In answer to your question, yes, power hungry people do sometimes drive me up the wallif in fact all they do care about is power. Often times though, I've found that those complaining the loudest about "power hungry" people are in fact doing so out of jealousy and/or bitterness. This is particularly true at DH's place of employment. He's a mechanical engineer.
The engineers that DH oversees are always complaining about "power hungry" bosses, my DH and his superior in particular. When DH got his promotion to engineering manager a few years back, it was no secret that one of the other engineers wanted that position in a bad way. When the other guy was passed over for the promotion in favor of DH, boy did the complaining begin. DH has since gotten another promotion and is over multiple departments and as soon as that happened the constant "power hungry" comments from a couple of the guys got even worse.
It really made for a bad working environment for everyone, even though 99% of the people he supervises think he's a great boss. Thank goodness, the guy that was so bitter about everything finally ended up finding employment elsewhere. It was probably best for everyone in the long run.
Anyway, sorry to ramble on like this, but this thread immediately brought to mind this incident.