Anyone running this "inevitable but unworthy of respect" regime?

FP/ here

"....the country appears to be run by an absent president, a technocratic prime minister, a few leading politicians, and a collection of men behind a curtain ......

The overall direction is clear: Egypt is now in the midst of an uneven political clampdown........

..... The Egyptian Brotherhood is not going to transform itself into a revolutionary organization as a response: it is too set in its ways, cautious in its decision making, stodgy in its leadership, and committed to living down the damage to its reputation for past dalliances in the 1940s and 1950s with political violence. But its peaceful political efforts have few achievements to show (they have been able to sketch out a fairly comprehensive vision but not implement any of it). And the Brotherhood is increasingly dominated by leaders who prioritize politics less and show fewer political skills. Even one of the advocates and architects of its plunge into politics -- ‘Abd al-Mun‘im Abu al-Futuh -- recently floated the idea of a 20-year time out from parliament and national elections.

This is a loss -- and not because the Brotherhood's vision is so laudable. ..........The real loss, therefore, is not that the Brotherhood's vision will not be realized. Instead it is to be found in the maintenance of a stultifying political environment. The Brotherhood's leaders are the only opposition force in the country that can both articulate a vision and strategy and speak for a broad constituency. Without such Islamist participation, the Egyptian regime will be facing an opposition of inchoate protests and armchair intellectuals. This makes any positive political change unlikely. In fact, the more bashful Brotherhood will actually be useful to the regime -- it does not threaten but it does serve as a bogeyman to scare liberals and Western governments......

...... But that is not the point. The ElBaradei phenomenon is still significant and should be alarming to the regime. This is not because he is a viable presidential candidate under Egypt's closed system. Instead it is because only a regime without much credibility or legitimacy could be spooked by an international civil servant long absent from the country.

To say that Egypt is adrift is not to say its regime is unstable. Its current system does not inspire respect or affection, but it does quite effectively present itself as inevitable. It is as legitimate as gravity. In Egypt, the leadership's sense of raison d'état remains robust indeed, the problem is that its raison d'être is evaporating."