It seems to me that the one-second adjustment is exactly the right compromise. It's small enough to be ignored for most practical purposes (many clocks are out

It seems to me that the one-second adjustment is exactly the right compromise. It's small enough to be ignored for most practical purposes (many clocks are out by a second anyway), and it means that the offset between TAI and UTC is a round number (37 s rather than 36.852 s), while leap seconds are frequent enough for people to get a bit of practice at handling them, while rare enough that you can avoid them if you're not confident about handling them: don't schedule any rocket launches for 00:00 on Jan 1 or Jul 1. It seems exactly right to me.