He's good at promotion and raising capital, and has real products that function... but I can't believe he's only a salesman.

OTOH how would you go about assessing his engineering ability? He was accepted into a Stanford PhD program. An ex-employee of spacex was amazed how he absorbed a textbook of rocket science.

Unlike Eistein, he hasn't written any papers himself (AFAIK), so we can't assess his work directly. I would guess his primary role is being a technically and business-aware coach for engineers who actually do the work - like Steve Jobs. But maybe he is a genuine engineering genius himself - but how could we tell?

A simple talentless salesman, who with his humble head did more than a conglomeration of well-trained programmer employees that just follow orders.

Virtue is somewhere in the middle.