Yeah, they borrowed a lot from Trek lore, but thankfully they seem to have left the "badmiral" trope in the cutting room with the transporters. Both of which I appreciate they omitted.

The first time I watched through The Orville, every time one of the admirals was on screen, I was like, "What's your angle?" and just generally distrustful. Even Victor Garber, you might ask? Especially Victor Garber.

The Orville is great, I really hope they make more

Indeed, this is one of the areas where Star Trek has consistently fallen short of its "Utopian future" ideal. I understand that it's often done for storytelling purposes, but Orville shows how that's an unnecessary shortcut - it's still possible to write compelling stories and have the hero be a hero even if his superior officers are actually competent and in his corner.

Never watched Star Trek but in The Orville, it is explained that you get promoted to the higher job if you have a lot of honor and respect from society

So yeah I don't see how a corrupt politician could rose to admiral. They should either be military expert that already proven great success at a lower rank or as you said ancient captain.

One day we will probably have an episode one day with all the higher ups to see their struggle when they where younger, like a big battle flash back or something like that, it would be cool

There's this one admiral in The Orville third season, spoilers!

In retrospect, we haven’t had much in terms of badmirals in the streaming era.

Discovery had Admiral Cornwell, but when she’s presented with alternative solutions, she hears them out.

Prodigy maaaaybe has Admiral Jellico… but his bad-ness was “Don’t start a war with the Romulans”.

Strange New Worlds has April, who is barely a presence.

Picard has Admiral “Sheer /bleeping hubris” Chancy which… can you blame her?

Arguably, the only proper Badmiral we’ve really had is Buenamigo in Lower Decks.

Competent admirals don't make for exciting stories though. We don't see toilets often in TV either, not because they don't exist, but because we only see toilets when they relate to the story. Admirals in Star Trek are like Chekhov's gun, we don't see them unless they're necessary for the story. Boring competent level headed not traitorous Admirals are just rarely necessary for good story telling unless they happen to be the protagonist dealing with drama elsewhere.

I also just finished it, what an incredible third season.