What's also endemic is people not bothering to participate in the lawmaking process and then throwing a tantrum that laws are bad.

If you don't bother and the other side does: guess whose suggestions end up in the law. Democracy is not a spectator sport. If you don't show up it has consequences.

That's not very a sophisticated take to be honest, especially when we're talking about a part of the world that gave us the word "realpolitik". Politicians disappoint and unscrupulous people exploit. Absolutely everyone already knows that. It doesn't mean that nothing ever improves.

I don't have optimism about the diligence of politicians. I have optimism about (and direct experience with!) the diligence of the bureaucracy that advises those politicians, and that carries out the actual operation of policy, maintenance of infrastructure, etc.

The people you see on camera and in the news are a tiny, tiny slice of the operation of government. It is a grave misunderstanding of how society functions to equate "politicians" with "the government". This is true of any large system: a company is not its CEO, a non-profit is not its executive director, a program is not the interface it exposes to the outside world, and so on. In dealing with large systems, equating the part with the whole like this is effectively throwing away 99% of your power to understand and change those systems.

Or perhaps we only hear about the failures because they make the news?

When a policy works, it's what is expected so it's not notable.