Donald Trump may or may not be Vladimir Putin’s poodle, but for his administration to function he has to be Mike Pence’s puppet.

Trump has few evident skills beyond a passion for self-promotion and a thuggish capacity to bend those he deals with to his will. He has no consistent political philosophy, no experience of Washington and even less of managing his role within the Republican Party.

His rancid abuse of his rivals for the Republican presidential candidacy has been papered over — but politicians don’t forget that kind of mugging. They’ll be waiting for their own dark alley moment.

Trump clearly understands that his only source of legitimacy among Republicans is that he won, and he feels vulnerable because Hillary Clinton got nearly three million more votes than he did. Hence Trump’s Wednesday tweet launching an investigation into alleged voter fraud, the purpose of which is to scare up some “alternative facts” allowing him to claim he won the popular vote.

In this fetid atmosphere, Pence plays a pivotal role: He has skills Trump lacks, skills the president needs to be able to get through a single day without imploding. Pence is set to become perhaps the most influential vice-president in living memory. (That said, it would be a tight contest between him and George W. Bush’s Dick Cheney.)

It is a strange and troubling world when the adult in the room of the U.S. executive branch happens to be a rabid right-wing evangelical Christian who has no time for people who are not copybook heterosexuals, who is iffy about public education, who believes warnings about global warming are junk and supports to the hilt traditional carbon energy production, who cannot wait to kill the Affordable Care Act, who wants to make abortion and even family planning for women impossible, and who has toyed with end-runs around professional media. But these are strange times.

Pence had a dozen years in Congress when he became a leading ideologue of the ultra-right-wing Tea Party faction, and for two years was chairman of the House Republican Conference, the party caucus. He also stood out as one of the most prominent evangelical Christians in Congress. In 2013 he returned home to Indiana as governor, a post he held until he was gathered up by Trump last year as his running mate.

Pence was an essential asset to Trump during the campaign, reassuring evangelicals and dubious Republicans, and is now a loud and pushy bullfrog in the Washington swamp. That is exactly what Trump needs if he is going to make any significant progress in fashioning some scaffold of reality underneath the fantasies he conjured up in the hearts of many voters during the campaign.

Pence seems already to have his hand high enough up the Trump puppet glove to be able to work the vocal cords from time to time. Some of the executive orders signed by Trump in his first days in office appear to meet Pence’s agenda rather than his own. Pence seems already to have his hand high enough up the Trump puppet glove to be able to work the vocal cords from time to time. Some of the executive orders signed by Trump in his first days in office appear to meet Pence’s agenda rather than his own.

But Pence won’t find it easy to keep the Trump administration on track. Trump’s gadfly attention span and his bullying nature make him a highly unpredictable commodity. Trump prefers getting his way by brute force rather than diplomacy — and, like the Roman emperors, he decides policy by the volume of the crowd braying in the Colosseum.

Trump also has surrounded himself in the White House with a group of apprentices whose loyalty to the sorcerer appears to outweigh any allegience to truth or common sense. Trump has an incredibly thin skin and seems completely unable to absorb criticism or laugh off satire. The designated protectors of his image — Kellyanne Conway, Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus and Sean Spicer — already have offered examples of the kind of mental contortions they’re prepared to make to convince the crowd the emperor is, in fact, wearing clothes. These performances can only get more ludicrous as the days pass.

With this cast of characters, Pence’s dealings with Geppetto’s White House will be a daily wrestling match. But Pence seems already to have his hand high enough up the Trump puppet glove to be able to work the vocal cords from time to time. Some of the executive orders signed by Trump in his first days in office appear to meet Pence’s agenda rather than his own.

Pence is going to be an essential messenger in dealing with Congress on the wider agenda of the Trump administration. Fortunately for Trump, Pence gets on well with the Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan. They have very similar political views and, when Trump isn’t paying attention, it will be these two men who will shape the U.S. legislative and policy agenda for the next four years.

Just as significant is Pence’s role in staffing the Trump administration. Much attention has been paid to Trump’s picks for the cabinet and other senior posts in major agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency. Trump’s admiration for Putin’s oligarchic management style appears to shine through in the new president’s penchant for hiring billionaires.

However, these appointments make up only a small minority of the more than 4,000 executive positions that the new administration must fill. It is Pence who is leading the White House team sifting candidates for these posts and picking the winners. That means that the bulk of the people in senior positions in this administration are going to owe their loyalty not to Trump, but to Pence.

It is unusual for a U.S. president to come to office with speculation about impeachment hanging over his head on Day One. But there are good reasons to imagine that Trump might not complete his four-year term in office.

His refusal to make public his tax returns inevitably raises questions about what he’s hiding. It’s only a matter of time before those documents are leaked.

There is clearly more to come on Trump’s business dealings with Russia, which can be damaging enough without any salacious sidebars.

And his failure to properly distance himself from his businesses while in office has only created a conflict of interest disaster waiting to happen.

If, or when, Trump throws in the towel, Pence is more prepared than many of his predecessors to do his vice-presidential duty.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.