RABBI WEIN ON UNPOPULAR LEADERS

There have been many instances in human history when people were not universally popular with their subjects and citizens. No ruler has ever had unanimous popularity and approval – witness Moshe and Korach, for example – but like everything else in life, popularity is never absolute but only relative. In elections a candidate that achieves a fifty-five percent majority is deemed to have attained a landslide victory even though forty-five percent of the population disapproved of the ruler.