Not sure if this was brought up before, but what if Palpatine wasn’t working the Feds and Separatists? Instead of fabricating a crisis to gain power, the invasion is “real” and he sees it as a chance to rise. Surely there are ways to go around this, and it would solve the entire galaxy looking like idiots for not finding out he was behind it all.
A bolder move even, would be to have Palpatine begin his reign with good intentions, becoming progressively more decadent until he has formed the Empire. It would have to be done in a way that realistically leads to him gleefully torturing people with lightning decades later.