Problem being, lots of middle managers got the job via The Peter Principal. My last boss landed the role that way. He's an astonishing devops guy and one of the 5 smartest humans I've ever known, but he cannot manage people.

Quit my job at Lowe's when it became apparent the regional theft prevention manager hated me. GM passed me in the store and said I better watch it with her as he couldn't protect me. Loved the three guys above me, but I was out a couple of hours after hearing that.

Yeah, that can be tricky. Under a previous manager where mostly he was ignored and I worked straight with the middle management, I had gotten the hang of the people inflicting the politics and crap and was significantly able to directly counter it to avoid spurious bullshit.

Then when that manager got laid off, and I got a new "I'll shield you" manager, who largely just takes whatever crap he's told and passes it on and says it's better to just take it than risk making waves. So I end up having to waste more time than I used to.

But absolutely was valuable in an early manager who took on the politics direct while I just did my work in early career. Of course he got fired for keeping documentation on a certain executive making a terrible call and actually sharing it with the senior leadership team when that terrible call went bad. Senior executives canned the executive, but let him fire the manager on the way out. Guess if there's one thing worse than an executive incurring risk, it's a snitch.

what about his manager?

so they don’t have to deal with them

Yep, that’s the entire purpose of middle management. Making sure the c-suite doesn’t have to interact with the plebes.