If one person thinks this way, many more do. This is typical in large organizations, especially government institutions, because expense of running entire teams at massive costs for no reason is not born by the team but by someone with a much larger budget that has more money than care or completely wrong incentives (the more people I manage, the more important I am, type of orgs). This is organizational gangrene described from the inside and partly how or why it happens. If you are leading an organization and reading this - figure out how to measure and prevent it.
Humans think this way. This isn't a cultural thing, it's human nature. We like positive people and dislike negative people. Ignoring the fact that political capital is a thing won't make it go away.