It should go without saying that our national health relies on a grown-up relationship between the president and the speaker of the House. But Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi are more like the Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner of American politics, our Karen and Jack, our Alexis Carrington and Dominique Deveraux, our Ren and Stimpy. She has been speaker for roughly two months of his presidency, but it’s as if they’ve been on the Cartoon Network for 20 years. He tries to drop an anvil on her. She lures him over a cliff. We care about the nation’s health, but we seem to enjoy the anvil business even more.

Look at the visual highlight of the State of the Union address. It’s only a few seconds long — Trump turning to absorb Pelosi’s smirking spin on a routine stand-and-clap — but it proved more noteworthy than the hour-plus of speechifying. It comes at about eight minutes in. The president’s on an alliterative high, talking about rejecting the “politics of revenge, resistance and retribution.” When he gets to the part about embracing “the boundless potential of cooperation, compromise and the common good,” the room erupts in approval.

But something tells Trump to turn around. He rotates toward Pelosi, who has thus far been clapping tepidly, here and there, when not inspecting her paper copy of the speech the way people search certain restaurant menus for something they can eat. What Trump glimpses is stranger and more pointed than Pelosi’s previous handwork. Now she is extending her arms all the way out, toward him, applauding him the way you might applaud a little kid who wants credit for behavior that warrants none or a dad proudly announcing that he has finally changed a single diaper.