No one besides Donald Trump was going to ask Rex Tillerson to the prom. No one else was going to pin a corsage on Jeff Sessions, pick up Steven Mnuchin in a chauffeured limo, give a box of Godiva chocolates to Betsy DeVos.

A more conventional, responsible, admirable president would have looked right past them, at comelier options galore. On some level they know that. Trump certainly does. That’s his power over them — a poison in the heart of his cabinet. He gave them a chance and a dance that they weren’t going to get any other way. In return he demands a gratitude that’s unhealthy, a deference that’s unseemly.

Every presidential administration has its deadbeats and dysfunctions. None that I’ve observed has an ethos of abject servility like Trump’s. That’s what we witnessed over the weekend, when the obsequious handmaiden otherwise known as the vice president flew at taxpayer expense to his home state of Indiana for a game between the Indianapolis Colts and the San Francisco 49ers.

Mike Pence merely pretended that he was in the mood for football. He was really in the market for cheap political theater. During the national anthem, when some players predictably took a knee, he took calculated offense, storming out of the stadium and doing his boss proud. Trump tweeted afterward that Pence had been obeying his orders.