This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. To appreciate the power of a myth, let’s take a quick visit to post-Soviet Russia. In the weeks after Vladimir Putin came to power in early 2000, the new Russian president was enjoying a 77% job approval rating, a definite improvement from his 31% outlook just a few months earlier while he was biding time as then-President Boris Yeltsen’s prime minister inside a fast-unspooling regime.