My team lead was the least competent person on the team. This was constantly frustrating. When it finally bugged me enough to look around, much better pay was available. So that pretty much did it.
I am a team lead and my team members are at least my level of competency (which means they're usually better than me). I listen carefully, trust the team and shield them from problems from above.
My current manager, one of the best I’ve ever had, is much the same. Technically not superb. But at least pretty good. Also a great listener, and really keyed in to what the team is up to, struggling with, contributing, etc.
The TL I had the issue with very much behaved like an IC, almost never met with me, seemed to be dialing it in most of the time, and just generally was very hard to explain things to. An absent parent, more than a bad parent.
Sounds like that makes you a pretty good team lead, though. Competence isn't all technical -- you have to be good at what you do. There's no benefit in a team lead that sucks at leading a team but is a total luminary at $TECHNICAL_TOPIC.
Exact same reason as me. They were the personification of Dunning-Kruger. It's so damn disheartening to go to work everyday when you know what you are working on is absolutely doomed to fail, and you are powerless to stop it thanks to office politics.
You might look around a bit. Alternately, I’ve found that not caring about consequences can be surprisingly liberating. As in: if it’s really that hopeless, you may as well speak your mind and say what’s fucked up. What are they going to do, fire you?