I read a very good novel a couple years ago, The Folding Knife by KJ Parker. Parker is, ostensibly, a fantasy writer, though there is no fantastical element here. It’s set in a secondary world with roughly early European Renaissance level technology, though iirc there is no religion at all. The book is set in this prosperous city state that sits on the forgotten edge of this ancient lumbering empire. This city has a democracy, two parties. The main character is the scion of a banking family, a true genius, who decides he will become the most powerful banker in the city and then use that influence to become a supposedly benevolent dictator. He achieves this, but fairly early in his tenure, plague comes to the city. He begins to go to enormous effort to save the city, but they lack the science to understand how the plague spreads or how to stop it. Despite the fact that plague ravages the city, the dictator’s popularity with the people doesn’t go down. He asks his advisors why his popularity didn’t go down even though he failed to stop the plague. They say it was because the people really believed he was trying his hardest to save them, that it is more important to be seen to do something in the face of crisis, even if it doesn’t work, instead of doing nothing.

Makes sense to me, but then again I’m not a world leader.