WASHINGTON — And a huge sigh of relief went up in the land. The mad king could stay on script long enough to fake normality.

The truculent sovereign could be yanked away, for a blessed hour, from Twitter to a teleprompter.

He could emerge from his dystopian, carnivorous man cave, guarded by the fanged two-headed Stephenbeast of Bannon and Miller, and condemn the hate he spent so long stirring up.

Liberal pundits were nonplused by the shock of the president using his “indoor voice,” as he traded the cudgel of “American carnage” for “the torch of truth, liberty and justice” in his maiden speech to Congress. For a moment, at least, the shrieking chorus dimmed, the demands that Donald Trump be put in a straitjacket and that the 25th Amendment be invoked quieted down.

Trump was at long last conforming, and following the norms of Washington. And that always pleases Washington.