It's certainly possible that in some cases that's true, but there are a lot of government check-box security people who genuinely believe complex passwords rota

It's certainly possible that in some cases that's true, but there are a lot of government check-box security people who genuinely believe complex passwords rotated frequently are a good security control. There's also a general heuristic with many people in security that the more convenient something is, the less secure it is. Therefore smart card auth must be worse!