The solution (and problem) lies in the selection of admins, which I believe has become too lax. We need to recognize that adminship on a top 30 website IS a big deal. Even one admin who's unfamiliar with policy or who gets into wheel wars can cause major issues. We need stricter screening of candidates, preferably as soon as possible.
What's strange to me is that it seems that WP is one of the few places where you could really provide a comprehensive CV of all the good you've done and why you should be admin. Why not ask candidates to provide X diffs demonstrating their dispute resolution skills, and invite nay-sayers to provide diffs of bad judgement? Simple statistics should mandatorily be collected which would show roughly what sort of Wikipedia member they are: How many different talk pages have they left comments on? How many user talk pages have they left 2 or more comments on? How long have they been active? What is their activity pattern? How many edits have all the people voting for them made?
I like stats!
Steve