For Egypt’s Liberals, Noise Doesn’t Equal Power

On the face of it, the winds should have been favorable for Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi.

After kings and military dictators, he was Egypt’s first democratically elected president. He prevailed at the polls a year ago by a very narrow margin, with almost 52 percent of the vote in a runoff. It had not been the happiest of choices. The young men and women of Tahrir Square who had brought down the old dictatorship had been disinherited; their revolution, they asserted, had been hijacked.