Shortly after taking office, President Barack Obama traveled to Cairo to declare a new day in U.S. relations with the Muslim world, saying there was “no straight line” to building democratic societies in the Middle East.
The June 2009 address was in part intended to show a clean break from a George W. Bush-era “freedom agenda” of promoting electoral democracies across the region. Yet Obama now finds himself forced to move much closer to that worldview as he escalates pressure on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Obama has shifted in that direction cautiously over the past week and a half, balancing between urging wider freedom and maintaining his position that the events are for Egyptians, not Americans, to decide. To some extent, that might be his only safe course: Obama does not yet know what kind of government will take shape in Egypt, and administration officials are confident that if a hostile regime were to wind up taking hold, the president would inevitably take some of the blame.
And so the rhetoric has been circumspect. On Sunday, the administration called for an “orderly transition.” By Tuesday, that had escalated into a demand that Mubarak begin implementing democratic changes immediately, but it was not clear what that meant or exactly what the White House would like to see happen next.
Although senior officials have made it plain they want Mubarak to leave office right away, Obama has not said the same.
He has left that to protesters in the streets of Cairo — and to some outspoken foreign-policy hawks at home, including Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
Still, Obama’s approach has not eliminated the potential peril for him domestically.
If an Islamist regime takes control, comparisons to Iran will be inevitable, with Republicans accusing Obama of not managing one of the most vital U.S. allies in the Middle East and potentially endangering the security of neighboring Israel.
