The US system elects based on popularity, but the problems require technocrats. Decrease in educational standards and funding, as well as funding for other services, is both the reason and part of the answer.

We need bureaucracies that can be evaluated on efficiency in performance to mission. Many US representatives, ideologically, want to starve the US government of resources for a variety of reasons (serving the wealthy, lost cause, religious background, Reaganite). Rather than target efficiency, it's a simpler narrative to point to an underfunded, possibly brain-drained agency and make fun of its failings as it seeks to achieve its particular mission.