They don't have to be brilliant. They only have to outplay the rubes, which seems to keep happening. And it's correlated with them being consistently underestimated. But if you feel like you're winning in some way, by all means stay the course.
I love this goofy pseudo-intellectual aloofness. "Ah yes, I as an enlightened fellow can sit above the fray and commentate objectively on the degradation of the norms and laws that have kept our society operating for centuries."
Unfortunately in addition to "outplaying" people by just lying to the public, they must also govern. And they can't. So they're going to get smacked in the midterms, functionally crippled until 2028, and then likely many of them will be thrown in prison for their various crimes.