[coldtea]

And what if they people who "are given power and abuse that power" are still by far the best for the role?

One can imagine a politician who is a thief for example, stealing public money or who uses the state to harm his personal enemies, but is still a genius of public policy, great for steering the economy, a great leader at war, and so on. In the end, the amount of money they stole e.g. (in the case of the embezzler) is insignificant compared to the good he hid for the country as a leader.

You'd replace them with some "good person" if said good person's weren't as good?

And here's the catch, history accounts are filled with such people.

[LeonB]

The case at hand is an older man who interacts with younger students. Half of them don’t feel safe around him. He’s going to have to do an astounding job with the remaining 50% to make up for that.

It’s not about declaring some people “good” before hand. It’s more about spotting when power is being abused and giving someone else a go.

A government area very close to here recently arrested a politician who was also the most popular politician in the country (by % votes). He’s now been found guilty of some crimes the scale of which is quite small compared to the absolute scale of the area he ran. But all of his decisions and appointments will now be examined. There are definitely plus and minuses to his downfall. But on balance I’m glad that people didn’t continue to turn a blind eye to his corruption, even if some of it “got the job done” faster.