Any way we look at it, Mubarak is gone. The man is old, and reputedly not well; nature would take care of him, were it not for the mobs. He has been a hard realist all his life; there is every reason to believe he is trying to make the best possible accommodation for the future of his country, under the conditions suddenly presented. The army, at this point, is making its own calculation, of whether it is better positioned with or without him still in office.

In Mubarak’s interview with Christiane Amanpour of ABC News this week, I think we glimpsed the reality. Amanpour herself seems to have been deeply impressed, and to have learned something from the encounter. At the least it was a surprise to her, as to the rest of the media, to discover that Mubarak’s son, Gamal, universally reported to have fled the country, had not. (That son was, incidentally, behind many of the free market reforms, and has been mischaracterized to the point of slander. He was trying to be Egypt’s Rajiv Gandhi.)

“Apres moi, le deluge.” As connoisseurs of this expression will know, it is always worth considering. And just as some paranoids have real enemies, some third-world dictators have good reason to warn what will happen if they relinquish power.