IMHO, a major reason South Korea improved so much in recent decades is, when we had idiotic/evil leaders, we didn't say "What did you expect from the government? The government can and will be run by idiots, so you should not depend on it."
Instead, we said "How come our government is run by these murders and idiots? This is unacceptable! We demand a government we can depend on!"
You keep saying the government is run by idiots, you get your government run by idiots. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
All these things about idiots being in charge is, as Buffet said, true of companies as well. Nothing is a panacea.
I'm not every talking about government funding. I'm talking about government having too much power and control. That said, just throwing more money at the government gives zero guarantee that it will run any better. It usually will run just as poorly, but wasting more money than before.
Cockups like this really should lay to rest the idea some people have that the federal government is a panacea for everything.
This is very similar to one of Warren Buffett's quote about investing in companies: “I try to invest in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will.”
The truth is that federal government is far from being able to be wonderful when run by idiots. The best thing to do is try things out at the state level and if it proves to be so wonderful, only then do you try to scale it to two states, then three until it is so wonderful that it can be done at the federal level.