1920 Cartoon from the Brooklyn Eagle depicting the hard wall of public opinion.

A quote from James Madison:

Public Opinion sets bounds to every government, and is the real sovereign in every free one. As there are cases where the public opinion must be obeyed by government; so there are cases, where not being fixed, it may be influenced by the government. This distinction, if kept in view, would prevent or decide many debates on the respect due from the government to the sentiments of the people.

The issue is legitimacy. Deviate too far from public opinion and legitimacy is lost. Dictate rather than influence public opinion, and again legitimacy is lost. The cartoon on the left is ironic as one of the areas where the national government deviated from public opinion and then tried to dictate rather than influence/debate/deliberate a policy was industrial relations.

The result was a loss of legitimacy.