Are economics policies driven by populism necessarily bad??

I keep hearing about vote-bank politics that influences policies causing long term economic or socio-cultural impacts within a country and sometimes globally as they would intervene with global supply chains. I was reading a few articles on governance of countries and the popular economic policies that would shape their futures. There is a growing literature on the contemporary economic policies that are populist by nature. Many have argued that there are commonalities in the economic policies proposed and implemented by various populist governments over different periods of time. Significantly higher taxes for the minority rich; protecting the growth of industries at home by offering subsidies or imposing trade barriers; dolling out free money in times of distress caused by natural calamity or pandemic or for lack of appropriate governance or even to facilitate economic upliftment of targeted groups of people; interfering on mobility of labour to protect jobs for the existing citizens or targeted groups; influencing the economic institutions to introduce policies to stay in line with people sentiments; have been believed to be some of the examples of economic approaches or acts that are populist by nature. While, those in favour of these approaches may argue that they were indeed needed in the world of economic disparity, the elite may criticize them with views on their long term economic implications. The Public/ Private ownership of assets have also been an area of significant debate in this context. Assuming that democratic structure of electing people to govern a country is a preferred process, I am intrigued by the conflict it causes when that government enforces policies that are desired by the people who voted and gave them the power. 

Till the last century, these populist policies were more visible in the less economically advanced countries but the 21^st century is seeing them influencing policy makers of the advanced countries significantly. Barrack Obama made a promise of fixing the US medicare system in his election manifesto but ended up increasing the deductibles and social security payouts of more affluent community in order to provide insurance cover to the less-affluent. Donald Trump promised to increase jobs in the US and he ended up trying to stop migrating labour and protecting the existing jobs for US citizens. UK had to float a referendum to its citizens to vote for or against Brexit and they exited the European Union to stop free mobility of resources including labour trying to protect the interests (short term??) of its citizens. 

Irrespective of the nature of policies, economic or socio-cultural, the roles of political leaders of countries around the world or heads of global institutions like the UN, are challenged by one question. Should they be thought leaders of the people or should they be following the collective thoughts of the people, they lead? I guess, the elites will vote for the former while democratic set ups seem to be incentivizing leaders to follow the later…. What do you say?