Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are right, those are the bad incentives. And that is why there are legal and institutional and customary mechanisms in place to insulate central banks from political pressure, and by and large they seem to work well (maybe not in Argentina...) Even Trump didn't manage to sway Powell.
What? Trump got Powell not to raise rates in 2018 and 2019 when that would have been the perfect opportunity to.
More details than you ever wanted, from Bernanke's 21st Century Monetary Policy:
> At his swearing-in ceremony on February 5, 2018, Powell noted the importance of Fed independence—its “long-standing, nonpartisan tradition to make decisions objectively, based only on the best available evidence."
> On monetary policy, Powell soon made clear that, the president’s preferences notwithstanding, he planned to continue gradually moving toward a more neutral, or “normal,” policy stance. At his first meeting as chair, in March 2018, the FOMC voted unanimously to increase the target range for the federal funds rate by another quarter percentage point, to 1½–1¾ percent.
> In June [2018], the Committee raised the target range for the funds rate by another quarter percentage point [...]
> President Trump had praised Powell at the announcement of his nomination: “He’s strong. He’s committed. He’s smart.” And he remained silent on monetary policy through Powell’s first five and a half months. The honeymoon ended on July 19, 2018, when Trump, in a CNBC interview, said “I’m not thrilled” about the Fed’s interest-rate increases.
> [Trump's] public criticism of the Fed’s policy decisions would continue—a sharp break from the norm that, with few exceptions, had governed presidents after Nixon. Trump’s complaints also reversed his campaign-trail rhetoric that easy-money policies had created a “false” stock market.
> Powell’s strategy for dealing with Trump was multipronged. As he had at his swearing-in ceremony and, earlier, at the announcement of his nomination, he regularly and publicly emphasized that independence allows the Fed to make decisions in the public interest based on objective data and analysis and free of short-term political considerations.
> Consequently, the best policy, [Powell] concluded, was to continue Yellen’s policy of gradual rate increases, with close attention to economic developments and a willingness to adjust nimbly. As foreshadowed in Powell’s speech, the FOMC raised the target range for the funds rate again in September [2018], bringing it to 2–2¼ percent.
> On December 19, 2018, near the end of Powell’s first year as chair, the FOMC increased the federal funds rate target to 2¼–2½ percent. It was the ninth quarter-point increase since the tightening of policy had begun three years earlier under Yellen, and the fourth under Powell’s chairmanship.
> Four rate hikes in 2018, the promise of more in 2019, and the ongoing reduction in the balance sheet—which traders had dubbed “quantitative tightening”—added up to a significant prospective tightening, which seemed hard to justify when set against the agnostic stance that Powell had taken in Jackson Hole or the economic crosscurrents he cited at the press conference.
> In 2019, Powell and the rest of the FOMC navigated continued pressure from the president. They had to avoid “caving” to Trump’s demands but also not allow a desire to demonstrate independence to distort their decisions.
> On April 5 [2019], the president told reporters that the Fed should cut rates, and on April 30 he tweeted that the economy would “soar like a rocket” if the Fed lowered its benchmark rate by a full percentage point. “They [Fed officials] don’t have a clue,” he tweeted on June 11.
> It is hard to overstate how jarring Trump’s tactics were, particularly compared with his predecessors’ assiduous respect for Fed independence. Understanding the importance of not taking the bait, Fed officials responded to the inevitable press questions about the president’s tweets and comments through gritted teeth. For decades, presidential jawboning has not been an effective way to influence Fed policy, and it was not this time.
> At the press conference, Heather Long of the Washington Post asked Powell about Trump’s threat to demote him. He replied, “I think the law is clear that I have a four-year term [as chair], and I fully intend to serve it.”
> The foreshadowed rate cut, along with an early end to the runoff of the Fed’s balance sheet, came at the next meeting, at the end of July [2019].
> Despite the rate cut, the Fed’s first in a decade, Trump continued to assail the Fed chair. On August 14 he called Powell “clueless.” On August 19 he criticized Powell’s “horrendous lack of vision.”
> On September 11 [2019], [Trump] called on the Fed to “get our interest rates down to ZERO, or less,” labeling the FOMC, in a second tweet, “Boneheads.” At its September meeting the FOMC, as expected, cut the target range for the funds rate another quarter point, to 1¾–2 percent.