Pollsters call it the “rally effect.” In a crisis, people tend instinctively, if abstractly, to support their leaders. The signature example being that, when the Bay of Pigs invasion ended in failure, John F. Kennedy’s poll numbers went up.

So it is not surprising, perhaps, that Vladimir Putin is getting a boost from his strong-arming of the Ukraine.  As Olga Razumovskaya of the Wall Street Journal reports: