Senior White House official: "Egypt needs a potluck dinner, not a dinner party .."

"... I think that the people in the streets want regime change in the form of anything other than the Mubarak franchise. If Soleiman and the Army would get Mubarak on a plane to any one of his many international homes, they would seal their position as champions of the people -- despite some very sordid issues in his and the military's past.

As one senior White House official said to me yesterday:

The way we want to see the negotiations go is that we want to see the government have a potluck -- not a dinner party.

This is exactly right.

Soleiman can't be the host of a dinner party to which he controls the menu and the guest list. People representative of most aspects of Egyptian society need to bring their own views and stakes to the dinner.

The power and vision Egypt needs now at the top should be shared by a collective set of stewards -- not focused on the one holding an incumbent position.

That's the challenge today -- getting to a "potluck" version of negotiated regime change."