Because most Republicans didn’t expect Donald Trump to win the presidency, they had to cobble together a governing strategy on very short notice, but it was obvious many months before the election that if Trump were to win, party leaders would ignore his racism, corruption, volatility, and ignorance to whatever extent was necessary to enact a meaningful legislative agenda.

This was a morally hideous pact, but it bears superficial resemblance to a very familiar, unremarkable pattern. New presidents come in, often at the height of popularity, and they and their congressional allies make the most of it for as long as possible, until recriminations can no longer be suppressed.

This is how Democrats operated when President Barack Obama came into office, and even how Republicans operated in the pre-9/11 months of George W. Bush’s first term (though neither congressional party was working hand in glove with a shamelessly unethical person whose intemperate tweets about cable news segments threatened national security).

Just as now, the idea in 2001 and 2009 was to get as much done as possible, as quickly as possible—to consciously take on water and then bail out as much as possible later on, ahead of the next election. The difference is that Republicans today are accepting all the risks their predecessors did, but with few guaranteed returns to show for it.

It is obviously very early in the 115th Congress, but it’s easy enough to look back and compare where the Republican government is today with where previous unified governments were in the past.