You're basically echoing many of former President Duane Woerth's sentiments. He always wanted to see more centralized power, but pilots always started screaming about needing their autonomy whenever it was brought up. This is the problem we've always had from the very beginning days of ALPA. Pilots are control freaks, so they refuse to allow ALPA to have any centralized control. They want a big powerful union, but they don't want that union to have any control over what the individual MECs do.
To a degree, I understand this, as we don't want a "big brother" controlling every action we take. However, I do agree that we need more centralized control to prevent some of the bigger problems like scope giveaways and the fee-for-departure race for the bottom. Pilot groups should be allowed some autonomy, but when it comes to the overall strategy of raising the bar for the profession, it's time to give up some control, because this just isn't working.