Just look at how the "leaders" in place got there. Backroom deals instead of elections. Von der Leyen did not achieve a single thing in her career except for hiring consultants.

Our politicians are mostly lawyers, the job they and their staff do is all about laws. And even at that they suck, as is evident by the long list of laws they pass which are then denied by the supreme courts as unconstitutional.

We still don't have a good way of finding the best leaders and putting them in the potions where they are most effective, neither in politics nor in the economy (although there are positive examples of people and mechanisms in both).

I think we are super complacent with our representative democracy and we are failing to develop it further and make it better.