Moving too fast on Mubarak?

A while back I wrote a piece on dictators' exits.  Yesterday I wrote about the messiness of Egypt's current mess. If those posts were a pale ale and a stout, this one's a black and tan. 

Egyptian opposition leader Monir Abdel Nour was on the CBC Radio's As It Happens (starts at 9:45 in the clip) yesterday arguing that Hosni Mubarak needs to remain in power for a least two months in order for necessary constitutional changes to be made.  It's quite a compelling argument. Without the necessary constitutional changes and administrative transitions, and without a timely fair election (which just can't be done immediately), whoever takes over from Mubarak may face chaos and hold power, as Mubarak currently does, without legitimacy.  Or, perhaps even worse, the military could impose one of their own, as they did in 1956.

In the National Post, Conrad Black makes a similar argument about order and legitimacy post-Mubarak, and like Nour, says Mubarak has to be allowed to transition out of power over the coming months.   Black posits that leaders faced with mass protests can, a) flee, b) order the protesters to be fired upon (although those ordered to do so don't always obey - see Ceaucescu), or c) wait until the situation makes the majority uncomforable enough to side with a legal resolution rather than passionate chaos.  Black uses De Gaulle's response to France's 1968 uprising as an example of the masterful use of option c.  He suggests Mubarak, while not himself legitimate, is trying to do the same, and will use the time it'll buy to transition out peacefully. The fact that Mubarak may have sponsored the chaos-inducers doesn't seem to me to undermine Black's argument that, legitimacy and stability wise, option c may be better for everyone than the option a the protesters and many westerners want to see.

Legitimacy is about procedures and legality and all that, but more than anything, it's about people buying in.  The appearance of mob-rule, however real the greivances, could lead to a lot of horrible years for Egypt.