Smart cards is just certificate-based authentication really.
Microsoft did indeed fail hard - if they just made certificate authentication easy to configure on stand-alone machines like SSH key authentication is (and allow to keep the key as a file if desired, instead of in a smart card), a lot of pwnage would've been avoided.
I trust SSH to be public-facing. Don't have the right private key? Pound sand. You're not getting in.
I trust RDP to allow someone to break into my machine, get admin privileges, and infect / bot it, likely in under an hour.
Smart cards rolls eyes