Bajo, the funny thing is all one has to do to see what populism does to a country is look at the US. Watch as it goes, decade-by-decade, into a system where only the government can make things "right" and give everyone "equality".
When I was young, I worked as a cashier in a big chain store at 16 years old as a cashier. I had various other jobs in fact, as did my friends, working as waiters, in construction crews in the summer, flipping burgers, etc. Often things that adults didn't want to do or were paid too little. I bought my own car from working a summer construction job in addition to my night cashier job. I paid for my gas and insurance for that car by continuing my cashier job.
In 2012, teens had 70% unemployment. They are being pushed out of job markets that in the US were originally teen employment by adults who have little other opportunities themselves. Things get worse year after year, while people search for a strong president to lead them away from misery instead of revolting against the corruption and twisted memes that those in power love to use to maintain and solidify their power.
Populism gets one nowhere (unless you are a populist yourself and in the power structure somewhere), and as Alvarez says, tends to multiply misery, because without misery you can't have the need for populism. I'm sure many rolled their eyes when she mentioned Hitler (don't remember if it was in the video Camberiu linked to, or was that one of her other speeches or interviews?), but he is actually one of the biggest poster boys for what populism at its worst can lead to. He is indeed an extreme example, but a valid one nonetheless and it doesn't really take much to compare him to any populist ruler, as long as you take away the death camps and such that were the far extreme of his rule. Rather look at his fascist control of industry, the push to blame others and even become violent against those who are being blamed and the insistence that only he can solve the country's problems, in his manner, and such to compare to what others are doing all over the world today. And then we have someone like Maduro that arises from the ashes of Chavez, someone who seems even more tyrannical than his progenitor.
It's a real shame that people here, and in the US, as well as other places, aren't being taught self-reliance, but rather dependence on the "father" or "mother" figure to solve everything for them.
It's a shame that nowadays, after the rule of kings and other royalty has been mostly stripped away from the world, that people don't see the strengthening of central figures such as presidents as a bad thing, instead everyone looks for a strong president to "lead the way".
If I was the next president, I'd do everything I could to strengthen the institutions of the country, to tell the people that I'm not the answer, but rather that they are and try to show them why, and I would do everything to ensure that nothing except the rollback of existing laws from the legislative body passed my desk. Of course, that wouldn't stop anything in any kind of quick fashion - I would need to have strong successors to follow me to unravel decade after decade of damage populism has done. And the only way to continue to have such strong leaders would be if the populace itself woke up from the bad dream of populism and supported such efforts, which is unlikely - because strong father figures mean at best the position is done after that figure leaves office.
In other words, it doesn't matter what one person does in the office of president be that person for liberty or for populism if the country itself is just waiting to hear what the next "strong" person has to say.
And economic pain isn't the reason to avoid any of these issues. When will people realize that all the crap and half-measures taken by governments to deal with economic issues only puts off the trouble for later and makes things worse in the long run? If there was any way to let things down slowly, that would be great, but it's nearly impossible in these days to think ahead in years as the next candidates of populism would be able to fix onto the idea that anyone trying to fix the root problems only made things worse and they can make things right.