It would take four Republican defections just to get Bolton in the door. Even the most theoretically independent of them — even the ones who are at no political risk whatsoever — seem too terrified to stand up to their leader. (O.K., Mitt Romney, one last chance.)

Some of the Republicans might think wistfully that Mike Pence — even Mike Pence — would be a big improvement over the guy we’ve got now. For the country, maybe, but not for Mitch McConnell. Trump is the perfect president for Mitch. For the past three years, the senator from Kentucky has basically been running the government. Somebody has to do it, and the administration’s people are barely capable of opening their office doors.

Trump’s two big victories as president have been the tax cut — organized and pushed through to law by Mitch McConnell — and a raft of new conservative federal judges. Listen to the president and you’d think he had the opportunity to name them all because Barack Obama just forgot — or was too lazy — to fill any openings. (“He gave me 142!”)

In the real world Obama was nominating judges like crazy. McConnell refused to even give them a hearing.

Thanks to his pal and protector Mitch, Trump has it both ways on issues like gun control and prescription drug prices. He can say he’s in favor of change without taking any risk that anything will be presented for his signature into law. Mitch has it all covered — with a lid. The House passed more than 400 bills last year, and about 80 percent of them are sitting around moldering on the Senate runway.

This is incredible power for a politician who’s never been elected to national office and isn’t even popular in his home state — one recent poll put him at the very bottom of the Senate, with a 37 percent positive voter rating in Kentucky.

Nevertheless, the country’s been Mitchified.

It’s really the McConnell era, and we ought to be discussing that every day, particularly whenever Donald Trump is within earshot.