I think this is a real flaw. Office politics are popularity contests. And popular people are usually not the most effective or integral people. In fact, often the popular path is entirely the wrong one. And when two-thirds of reviews are about "soft skills" or some such, it will probably actually boil down to a popularity contest.

I mean I can think of multiple times over the years where projects absolutely failed even though people politely pointed out the flaws but did not push to correct them because they did not want to rock the boat and knew it would make them unpopular or "a jerk".

Sure there are _actual_ jerks that theoretically this would "catch", but it seems like competent managers would give them a warning and if they weren't obviously improving, eliminate them by necessity.

Another aspect of this is that politically connected (office politics) people in the organization are often immune to this type of thing, and calling them out in a review could be career suicide.