> Yep, every time I've ever worked for a manager who wants regular 1:1 meetings "just to touch base"

Huh? Not even slightly.

I scheduled one-on-ones with my reports generally every week and no later than every other week. No exceptions for me.

My reports could always opt out of them if they chose (maybe they were super busy--maybe nothing needed to be covered), but I could do so only very rarely and I forced myself to reschedule.

It is vitally important to make sure that people reporting to me could get my personal attention even when I was super busy.

While I'm sure some of them "fed me platitudes", they also sometimes jumped up and down about something going wrong that they didn't feel comfortable bringing up in public contexts. That's really important.