Hm. The West Wing had some truly wonderful examples of people being rational, smart, and efficient... and they had to be in order to solve the innumerable conflicts that came to them. Contrast with The Thick Of It, where the incompetent characters are the very image of Robin Hanson's model of humanity while the competent ones (or rather competent one) are moved more by loyalty to an institution (which doesn't reciprocate) than to the actual service of the public.

Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister were intermediate examples. Sir Humphrey is very intelligent. He's also very arrogant because of his intelligence and culture, and completely heartless besides, utterly free of the burden of a consciousness. This can make him ruthlessly efficient at times, and at times a complete idiot, in fairly realistic and understandable ways. Bernard is very cultured, but is amazingly naive and tends to focus on small details to the point of pedancy. Jim Hacker, the titular Minister, is a man of average intelligence and average morality who struggles to survive as a politician (and who at least tries to do the right thing, or his limited understanding of it). The results speak for themselves.

In both TWW and YM/YPM, I find myself laughing with the characters more often than at them. If there's laughter "at", it's at the struggles they're facing and how sympathetic their difficulties with them are.