the ambassadors from Saudi Arabia and the UAE, two of the most powerful envoys in Washington, were telling people in the press and the foreign policy establishment that Obama had been badly advised by younger people like me who were more interested in preserving Obama’s brand than listening to the wise hands who understood that democracy couldn’t work in the Middle East. It was the beginning of a multiyear effort by those two countries to restore a dictatorship in Egypt, and it would ultimately succeed.
