Is Obama selling out the protesters?

Ross Douthat in the NY Times is full of praise for President Obama’s caution and realpolitik with respect to Egypt:

Obama’s response to the Egyptian crisis has crystallized his entire foreign policy vision…it’s clear that the administration’s real goal has been to dispense with Mubarak while keeping the dictator’s military subordinates very much in charge. If the Obama White House has its way, any opening to democracy will be carefully stage-managed by an insider like Omar Suleiman, the former general and Egyptian intelligence chief who’s best known in Washington for his cooperation with the C.I.A.’s rendition program. This isn’t softheaded peacenik dithering. It’s cold-blooded realpolitik.

Or is it just a mistake?

The president has been remarkably unclear in the last day or two about where Egypt should be going. Democracy talk is out again.  I am with him all the way if he wants to suggest that Egyptians should decide their own fate, but when he says Cairo can’t go back where it came from he is suggesting something else: that as long as it doesn’t go all the way back to a Mubarak-style autocracy, the U.S. may be prepared to accept or help stabilize the outcome.

That is a message Omar Suleiman no doubt enjoys hearing, as he clearly has no intention of taking Egypt much more than a meter or two down the path of “reform.”  And it may be a message welcome to some in Congress.  But do we really think that Egyptians will accept a revolution that gives power to the man President Mubarak might have given power to even in the absence of the street protests?  It may be realist, but is it realistic?

Of course behind this “realism” lies fear:  in particular of the Muslim Brotherhood.  Reuel Gerecht, also in the NY Times today, clarifies why fear of the Brotherhood coming to power is overblown, even if the organization itself continues to be odious.  In fact, he argues that bringing it into a broad democratic tent might be the best thing that could happen to defuse and even reverse radicalization among Sunnis. An analogous experiment is underway with Moqtada al Sadr’s Shia political forces in Iraq, so far without any great detriment to the U.S.

My hope is that President Obama is somewhat less realist than Douthat thinks, and somewhat more pragmatic about the need to ensure that he is not seen as selling out the protesters.  If Omar Suleiman is able to restore autocratic “stability” to Egypt, and if President Obama is perceived as having helped him do it, the next protests will not be as benign towards the United States as those of the last ten days.

PS: This is a lot better than the Black-eyed Peas half-time show: