Mark Steyn’s new column is about Howard Dean’s stunning transition from raving, shrieking wildman to heavily tranquilized milktoast: Mad Dr. Dean jolts Kerry campaign to life.

In his interview with Diane Sawyer from Vermont’s charmingly restored Norwich Inn, he seemed to be fading into the authentic colonial wainscoting. The Vermonster had become, in ‘80s karaoke terms, the Calmer Calmer Calmer Calmer Calmer Chameleon. At Thursday’s Democratic debate in New Hampshire, the calmer he got — ”balanced budgets, fiscally conservative manageable budgets, budgets in balance fiscally conservative” — the more the bored Dean watchers speculated that he was about to go berserk, like kids at the zoo eager to start lobbing pebbles at the slumbering gorilla.

Not even Al Gore, in his bewildering array of alternative identities, managed to be both crazy and comatose in the same week. The governor seems to have come up with his own variation on the fiscally conservative/socially liberal shtick: Vote for Dean — fiscally balanced, emotionally unbalanced.

None of the Vermonster’s many enemies in the Democratic Party could have devised as exquisite a torture for Howard Dean as this last week. But, whether they’ve solved their party’s problem is another matter. What seems to be happening on the ground in New Hampshire is this: Now that John Kerry is the sane alternative to Howard Dean, much of Wesley Clark’s support has leached away to Kerry. But at the same time Dean has been so subdued and demoralized that some of his wackier support has leached away to Clark. If Kerry is the sane alternative to Dean, Clark is the crazy alternative to Kerry.