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In 2012, President Obama was faced with a new Egyptian leader, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. Instead of applying pressure to root him out, President Obama waived U.S. law and provided taxpayer aid to prop up the most radical elements within Egypt.

It is going to take a long time to switch Egypt into a democracy.

Well, one thing that has happened is they have had a presidential election in Egypt which has represented progress. Now, we were not happy with everything that happened with the parliamentary elections, and it was not exactly a perfect presidential election in Egypt.

The so-called Arab Spring has proved that the fall of a Mubarak-like presidency does not mean the immediate rise of democracy. In spite of this, I am confident that Egypt will not return to an authoritarian governing system again, and that, with some time, it will achieve its democratic goals.

The dream of democracy has long been enshrined in the hearts of the Egyptian people. It only needed awakening.

If President Obama really means what he has said repeatedly about supporting the aspirations of the Egyptian people, then he will have to recognize that in Egypt today, as in America in 1963, that can mean opposing government policy.

The Muslim Brotherhood is a religiously conservative group. They are a minority in Egypt. They are not a majority of the Egyptian people, but they have a lot of credibility because all the other liberal parties have been smothered for 30 years.

I can tell you that the majority of the Egyptians I know, they think of a much wider spectrum of people than the Muslim Brotherhood.

Egypt has a presidential system. The president runs the state. Who the president is matters profoundly.