Unfortunately in a lot of environments if you are the kind of person who likes to spend most of their time focusing on politics you can get very far. This is because most of the other people are too busy working to have time to compete with you on a political level. I think this is why we see a certain percentage of destructive people in leadership positions. The only way to sort this out is from the top. But often the people at the top are also too busy to figure out what's going on. It's a weakness in the system that incompetent people can exploit.