There's also the mindset that you don't have to admit everything is fucked if you can fix it before people notice. But no one really knows how to fix it. So you desperately lie and say that everything is fine, or that it isn't fine but you totally know what the problem is and how to fix it. And then you just rock back and forth in the corner and hope things straighten themselves out on their own. Or that you'll at least be able to escape out the back door before the shit hits the fan and it becomes someone else's problem.
This is the main problem with government (both parties) as it currently exists - the job of a politician isn't to fix problems, the job of a politician is to get reelected. So they will always favor short-term solutions that look like they're fixing things, but which usually make things worse down the line. Because it doesn't matter if everything explodes 20-30 years from now if you can look like you're a proactive champion of the people today.
But most of the things going wrong that CAN be fixed (as opposed to the things that are pretty much inevitable because of global socio-economic factors) would require tons of sacrifice (which no voter will ever agree to), and tons of investment of money and effort over much longer periods of time (which no voter will ever agree to, and no one in government wants to commit to). So those solutions will never be proposed or accepted, even if the people running things are even aware those options exist in the first place.
Unfortunately, given the choice between doing something that will earn you praise and a raise, and doing something that will get you fired and likely give all the credit to someone else decades from now even if it does succeed, very few people are going to choose the greater good over their own well-being.
So we basically wind up in a scenario where we keep spinning all the plates, and every politician is hoping they can keep the plates spinning just long enough for it to become someone else's problem. Then when one of the plates falls everyone in charge of spinning them immediately starts blaming everyone before them, everyone on the opposite side of the room from them, the people who made the plates, and pretty much anyone else they can think of other than accepting the blame themselves.
And occasionally a politician will start three more plates spinning so they can claim they did something proactive.