This is an opinion column.

Katie Britt’s kitchen was empty. Her table was bare.

There was nothing to see but her. And she was – they told us – ready for her closeup.

Come on in, America. Meet your future, and see just how normal it looks.

None of this Tommy Tuberville stuff, with the casual racism or the flip-flopping or the hopeless ignorance about the three branches of government.

This was Katie Britt, Alabama’s Great Slight Hope. This was Katie freakin’ Britt, the second coming of Dick Shelby, who could keep his dignity, and hold on to most of himself while maintaining his conservative values, bringing home pork by the barrelful and appeasing the red meat Republican crowd and the Business Council of Alabama to boot.

Katie freakin’ Britt, the one they said was different. The one they said could show this whole country that young, educated GOP women were still a thing. They said she could demonstrate that Republicans could still be civil and dignified and respected, that they didn’t have to be performative clowns in MAGA hats, like Marjorie Taylor Green.

Katie Britt was the answer.

All eyes were on her Thursday night as she stepped onto a vast stage from that unnaturally empty kitchen to respond to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address. The country was watching as she began to read her predictable script, to audition for the role of her lifetime.

America was looking for proof of normalcy.

And it got “The Three Faces of Eve.”

Which is sort of appropriate, I suppose, since Britt has had to use a slew of personalities to pretend to be everything to everyone in her own state’s GOP.

Like always, you become who you pretend to be. And Katie Britt was everybody but the person people claim she is.

What was the part she was trying out for again?

One who could restore faith in the reason and reasonability of the future Republican Party?

Some said the real audition was for the vice presidency of the United States, a shot at being second in command to Donald Trump himself, an old man’s heartbeat away from becoming the leader of the free world, should it all go down as some polls predict.

All she had to do was read her script on a teleprompter, catch the bouquet, take her bow and take her place as a politician to be both respected and reckoned with.

And then…

And then she started to talk. And by the third paragraph of her prepared speech it was clear she was no longer auditioning for the role of vice president, or for the role of respected politician, or the role of likable mom or genuine human.

She was Faye Dunaway in “Mommy Dearest” shrieking “No wire hangers!”

She was Nicholas Cage in anything. She was William Shatner in “The Wrath of Katie.” She was over-the-top and anything and everything but reasonable.

She wasn’t trying out for VP. She was trying out for the cold open of “Saturday Night Live.” As the punchline and the punching bag.

Katie Britt was supposed to be the smart one, the reasonable one, the regular one.

She was supposed to be the one who would make Alabamians proud — or less embarrassed than they too often are.

Unfortunately, she will be remembered another way.

As a joke.

Which is too bad. Because she seems to come off pretty well when she only pretends to be herself.

John Archibald is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize.