You seem to believe that "skin in the game" guarantees the survival of the fittest leaders. This is only true assuming that the selection criteria are good ones and ones that cannot be cheated.

As long as anyone is capable of gaming their numbers, it floods out honest people in favor of cheaters. It's very powerful at selecting for whatever your metrics are. When you have the wrong metrics or ones that can be cheated, it's very powerful in an extremely bad way.

In addition, the general public and the media are absolutely not good at this, or we would have far better leaders than we do.