Once again, Egypt’s Tahrir Square is a hotbed of revolution.

For the past week, thousands of protesters have faced off with security forces, some resorting to violence in frustration over a government that just can’t seem to reach consensus. President Mohamed Morsi has been weakened. Egypt’s army chief has warned of “collapse.” Cars are burning in the streets.

Egypt’s president, Mohamed Morsi, proved the power of his might Sunday with a shakeup both rumored and surprising to many—sacking the head of the military, Egypt’s de facto ruler throughout the transition period, and several other key members of the distrusted Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.  

Morsi resolved to scrap a constitutional document that handed sweeping powers and autonomy to Egypt's military and ordered the retirement of Hussein Tantawi, defense minister and commander of the armed forces, and Chief of Staff Sami Anan, awarding both men state medals and appointing them presidential advisers. He also made his highly anticipated selection of vice president, naming Senior Judge Mahmoud Mekki as his deputy.

While many saw the expanding powers of the military as an attempt to hijack the revolution, the shuffle comes amid a violent standoff with militants on the Sinai Peninsula near the border with Gaza, and an overall lapse in security nationwide. Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt’s first civilian president, was viewed by many as nothing more than a figurehead, since measures taken by the military left little room for a second-in-charge. This latest move leaves many observers questioning whether Morsi’s ability to seize authority had been underestimated.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrapped up a two-day visit to Cairo on Sunday, the first since Egypt’s historic presidential election won by an Islamist candidate, potentially reshaping ties between these old allies against the backdrop of a rapidly changing Arab world.

Clinton cautiously reaffirmed America’s commitment to Egypt’s power transfer as a recent tug of war between newly elected President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood and the country’s top generals seemed to lodge the transition in limbo. She urged the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to fully support a handover to civilian rule while pressing Morsi to maintain his commitment to establishing a democratic state.

“Egyptians are in the midst of complex negotiations about the transition, from the composition of your Parliament to the writing of a new constitution to the powers of the president,” Clinton said at the joint conference with Egypt’s Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr. “Only Egyptians can answer these questions, but I have come to Cairo to reaffirm the strong support of the United States for the Egyptian people and for your democratic transition.”

Tuesday in Cairo was a moment for grand political theater and big dramatic gestures. It also was a day whose subtext was just as revealing as anything that happened in public.

Here’s what transpired on the surface: The Muslim Brotherhood staged a showy and symbolic convening of the People’s Assembly, in open defiance of both the country’s Supreme Constitutional Court and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. (An SCC verdict last month dissolved the four-month-old Brotherhood-dominated legislature on an electoral technicality that was swiftly enforced by the SCAF.)

Tuesday’s rebel parliamentary session was short and sweet—lasting less than 15 minutes and consisting of Speaker Mohamed Saad El-Katatni announcing that the whole parliamentary question would be referred to the Court of Cassation, the country’s highest appeals court. Then the Brotherhood headed two blocks away to Tahrir Square for a mass public rally designed to emphasize their popular support. Within hours of the parliamentary session, the Supreme Constitutional Court had publicly struck back, invalidating President Mohamed Morsi’s decree to reopen the Parliament in the first place.

Wouldn’t it be great if campaigns offered honest slogans, ones that told you the real reason to vote for their gal or guy? For the Romney campaign, a truly honest slogan would be something like: “Don’t worry, he doesn’t believe a lot of the stupid stuff he says.” For the Obama campaign it would be: “He’s managed America’s decline well.”

The Obama folks will never publicly admit that American power is in decline, but if you compare America’s international position today to its position in the late 1990s, the trajectory is obvious. In Bill Clinton’s second term, the U.S. was flush with cash, its military was coming off victories in the Gulf War, Bosnia, and Kosovo, governments across the world were embracing American-style deregulated capitalism, and America dwarfed its geopolitical rivals. Today, by contrast, America is deep in debt, its military is battered and exhausted, its economic ideology enjoys far less prestige, and it faces, in China, a genuine second superpower. Managing this reality has been the central foreign policy challenge of Barack Obama’s first term, and although his campaign can’t say so, he’s done a pretty good job.

A good example is Egypt. Since the 1970s, it has been a pillar of American dominance in the Middle East. Egyptian dictators made peace with Israel, cooperated with American-led efforts to force the Palestinians to do the same, and helped America battle various leftist and Islamist foes. Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak weren’t perfect clients, to be sure. They indulged, and even fostered, anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiment at home, and their repression and corruption sometimes proved embarrassing. But for more than three decades, Egypt was led by men far more supportive of U.S. policy than were the people they ruled.

Naglaa Ali wears little makeup and dons a khimar, an Islamic veil that completely covers the hair and falls loosely to the waist. Ali wasn’t well known in Egypt. That is, until she joined her husband Mohamed Morsi for a tour of Cairo’s presidential palace.

Less than a week before Egypt’s first Islamist president officially assumes office, the nation’s attention has turned to his wife. Until recently, Egypt’s soon-to-be first lady was a mystery to those her husband would soon rule. She rarely accompanied Morsi on his nationwide campaign, and she had done virtually no interviews.

With millions of people still flooding the streets of Egypt in a frenzied celebration over the results of the historic presidential election, Mohamed Morsi delivered his first televised address to the nation. Standing behind a tall podium marked with the presidential seal only hours after he was named the winner, he called for national reconciliation between fractured political powers. Morsi vowed to be president to all Egyptians in an effort to win the confidence of the 12 million people who voted for his opponent, Ahmed Shafiq, and the disenfranchised millions who abstained from casting a ballot. “I am aware of the challenges which face us now, but I'm sure if we work together, with your support, we will be able to pass through this transitional moment,” Morsi said in his victory speech.

The roller-coaster presidential race now behind him, Morsi, 60, must confront his fiercest opponent yet: the military. Days before the electoral runoff, the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) took several measures to consolidate power and limit civil rights, sparking outrage that drew tens of thousands of protesters back to Tahrir Square and around the nation. The Islamist-dominated parliament was dissolved a mere two days before voters went to the polls. The military also passed a decree stating that it—and not the president—will preside over the national budget, particularly with regard to defense. (Egypt receives $1.3 billion annually in military aid from the U.S.) Finally, it ruled that military officers can arrest civilians—a decision that was overturned Tuesday in an early victory for Morsi. The move kicked off the latest phase of Egypt's revolution under conditions of great uncertainty, with no parliament, no constitution, and a preemptively weakened president.

This week, the Presidential Elections Commission, the judicial body that oversaw Egypt’s first relatively free and fair contest for the country’s top job, finally certified Mohamed Morsi Eissa al-Ayat, the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, as the victor. The election had actually concluded a week prior, and while the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) announced its candidate’s triumph almost immediately, the PEC demurred, first saying it would release the result last Thursday, and then postponing until Sunday. Many believed that the delay was that so the judges, and Egypt’s ruling military junta, could figure out a way to cook the numbers to show a Morsi defeat.

This was not the first time that Morsi has had to cool his heels in limbo while a judge would figure out whether (or how) to steal an election from him. I first met Morsi eight years ago, when he was running for reelection to Egypt’s 454-man Parliament. A representative from the Nile delta town of Zagazig, he had been one of 17 Muslim Brotherhood legislators, and had earned a reputation as one of the body’s most vociferous critics of the government of Hosni Mubarak. Perhaps because of this, the word on Morsi’s campaign was that his seat was not safe, and that the regime was intent on removing him from the assembly.

The night of the election, I (and what felt like a thousand Muslim Brothers) stood outside the building in which the votes were being tallied by the judge (in the 2000 and 2005 elections, judicial oversight of vote counting was thought to provide a modicum of integrity to the process). Morsi and his opponent were inside the station, observing the judge do his work. Throughout the evening, we received reports on what was going on inside from a Brother who was in cellphone contact with Morsi or one of his aides. At one point, we began to hear that the numbers were showing a Morsi victory. Shortly afterward, we heard that the judge was now on the phone with superiors in Cairo. Finally, the word came that the judge had been ordered to swap the two candidates’ figures, and Morsi was arguing with him, pleading with him to fear God and do the right thing. The judge, who likely had plenty of more worldly things to fear if he actually took Morsi’s advice, was reportedly apologetic. As he put pen to paper to complete the foul deed, he allegedly turned to Morsi and said, “All I ask is that if you want to curse someone, please just curse me and not my children.”

CAIRO—Nada Badrawy leaned on a wall covered with graffiti of slogans and scenes from the 2011 revolution as she looked on to the tens of thousands of people in Tahrir Square. They were all waiting for the official announcement of who would become Egypt’s next president—a moment that they never thought possible just 16 months ago. She listened to Farouk Sultan, chairman of the Supreme Constitutional Court, deliver his speech through her red Samsung phone, its antennae stretched all the way out. Sultan's voice cracked through her speaker. "Khalas," she said. Sultan’s speech had dragged on for more than 45 minutes, and the people of Egypt had waited long enough. 

"I really hope for Shafiq," Badrawy said. "I really hope." But finally, after an hour of waiting, Sultan announced the news everyone had been waiting for.

Mohamed Morsi would become the next president of Egypt.

Morsi clenched the presidency with 51.73 percent of the vote, while his opponent Ahmed Shafiq, the last prime minister to serve under Mubarak, earned 48.24 percent, according to Farouq Sultan, head of the election commission and chairman of the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt. Euphoria instantly erupted in Tahrir Square as tens of thousands of Morsi supporters and pro-revolutionaries shot off fireworks, waved flags, and cheered in a frenzied celebration. Drivers honked car horns, and people ran through the streets shouting “God is great!”

“This is the happiest day of my life,” said Salah El-Din, 28, a Morsi supporter celebrating in Tahrir Square. “Dr. Morsi will defeat the military, and the power will belong to the people again.”