I don't know if they are more competent now. There are just fewer people willing to push back, and few to no guardrails in place for when the leader doesn't adhere to the usual governmental and ethical norms.
This is not my (and presumably your) definition of "competent", which would be "able to run these institutions well", or something along those lines.
And since it seems there isn't any real accountability any more other than anything that is strictly legally imposed, anything that goes wrong in this process is just blamed on the democrats, deep state, or whatever. Or its simply denied that the problems exists in the first place.