The engines of capitalism only look 1 quarter ahead. And the politicians who support them only look up to the next election. Unless you are majority or largely controlled by your founders, who care about building a good legacy.
That is, if your industry is tuned in to the investment climate, the things being pursued match the things that people are saying "will make the country great", and are backed up by legislation and financing deals.
In the previous era, the US was focused on a deindustrializing narrative: the things that made America great were "clean, high-tech" industry, high graduation rates and four-year degrees, and an outsourced empire that brought sprawling supply chains together "just in time".
The new model has brought back the industry, so it needs an emphasis on concrete job skills, versus academic credentialing. It's in-sourced so the supply chain has started in on a radical shift. It emphasizes new energy sources with few foreign dependencies, moving the geopolitical stance towards isolation. The approach to the national balance sheet also has to change, but precisely how lacks for consensus.
Like with the previous shifts there were some reasons to take the narrative in a certain direction: late 60's America had many environmental concerns, and fell into an energy crunch in the next decade. "Smart bombing" the Middle East to secure oil supplies brought together the national industries towards a common goal, and the money supply got a reset early on with the end of Bretton-Woods, that helped propel the Boomer generation towards homes-and-families participation within the system.
Today we're still putting together the pieces of that narrative, but it's central to the political climate: the old two-party system is focused on exhausted narratives that don't actually excite ordinary people to vote. Therefore the candidates are rushing to put together platforms that rewrite the script and mobilize new demographics.
The problem wasn't these rulers, it was what happened after they got old and died and their shitty kids replaced them.
There have been many historical examples of benevolent dictators. I can't think of any in modern history. Xi certainly isn't, and never was.
Democracy can avoid the problem of dictatorial systems by allowing the people the ability to get rid of bad rulers, at the expense of usually getting crappy rulers who only focus on the next election cycle, and frequently getting sociopathic narcissists in power.
As opposed to what, something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_campaign?