My view of the right US position is to shut up and let them work it out.
I think Hosni just proved how out of touch he is with the situation. As for Obama, his speech seemed designed to hedge his bets in the event that Mubarak somehow stayed in power. Events have moved past that though, and Hillary's comments today are now talking about a "transition."
My view of the right US position is to shut up and let them work it out. The numbskulls on Fox are wringing their hands about the Muslim Brotherhood and they're raising the specter of another Iranian-style revolution. Not gonna happen, though. The MB don't have a charismatic figure like Khomeini to rally around, and the same goes for Hizbollah with Nasrallah. Iran is not the model, and I am not sure what is, but I am hoping for something like what happened in Indonesia after the ouster of Suharto.
El Baradei is a known figure to the international community but is not known inside Egypt, although it seems like he is trying to jump in front of the parade. The opposition parties have been so suppressed that there is not really anyone coming out of that group that could galvanize support - one possible exception is Nuur, the guy who stood for President in the last election - he was then sent to prison for four years. The military is the only institution that is respected by the people, and the new VP comes from there. One thing is sure - Gamal Mubarak, old Hosni's son who was widely expected to take over, is now out of the picture. One scenario is that Hosni resigns, the VP takes over and the crowd goes home, and there are elections scheduled anyway for Septermber. From what I hear about the VP, even though he comes out of military intelligence, he is a decent guy who helped negotiate between the Palestinians with Israel and may be a good caretaker until then.
The Israelis must be a bit nervous - they have a new Hizbollah-led government in Lebanon, along with Syria in their north, Egypt is in flames to their west, and there are demonstrations in Jordan to the east. A bunch of Palestinians who were in jail in Egypt are now freed and back in Gaza. And Israel has pissed off the US with its refusal to stop settlements . The Wikiileaks revelations showed that even when the Palestinians were willing to cave on everything; even so Israel would not consider any peace arrangements, revealing that they were not negotiating in good faith. So maybe the knee-jerk support they have received in the past will be a bit less forthcoming. We'll see.