With each edition, the exercise became more of a spectacle and less of an update; more about the president and less about the Union; more about humbling Congress and less about communicating with it. Presidents come and go, now this party, now that one, but the humiliation is forever. The president’s partisans are expected to leap up with a roar at every boilerplate banality, while the opposition is to sit politely as he attempts to dig their political graves.

When, in 2009, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) shouted “You lie!” during a speech to Congress by President Barack Obama, it was a gross breach of decorum and a bad omen of things to come. Since then, members of Congress have searched for ways to steal their slivers of the presidential spotlight, while senior military officers and Supreme Court justices squirmed ever more miserably in their seats, reluctant bystanders at a souring circus.

This year’s address was the logical endpoint of the long-gathering trend. President Trump made no pretense of communicating information to Congress. He used the time to unveil his reelection message. He repurposed his fellow elected Republicans as campaign rally acolytes (chanting, before he even began, “Four more years!”). He poked and prodded the Democrats into one indecorous breach after another: televised eyerolls, face-palms, counter-chants and walkouts, culminating in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s theatrical ripping of her copy of the speech. Trump’s reality-TV-style giveaways — a scholarship, a medal, a family reunion — had me wondering if, a la Oprah, he would dish out new cars at the end.