But they also exposed, as the Times put it, a "clash of methods," and what the late historian Frank Freidel, in his 1973 book "Franklin D. Roosevelt: Launching the New Deal," described as "one of the strangest struggles in the history of the presidency" — an apt characterization even now, when the history of that office seems to take ever stranger turns.
The US state department urged Egypt's leaders to put a stop to the clashes, while UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon called for demonstrators to be protected.
Mr. Haniya, flanked by Fatah activists, told reporters after the talks that the two sides had agreed to put a stop to the clashes.
Harsh police measures in other cities, including a clash in Oakland that put a veteran in intensive care and the pepper-spraying of an 84-year-old woman in Seattle, built popular support.
If losing would mean giving the terrorists the upper hand in the battle for hearts and minds in the Muslim world, then this war really was, as the US National Security Strategy puts it, a clash "inside a civilisation: a battle for the future of the Muslim world".
The Northern Alliance defense minister, General Fahim, was in touch with both sides today, to try to put an end to the clash and also with United States forces to receive an explanation of the air strikes, Gen Anderabi said.
The Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniya, who is from Hamas, condemned the violence and called on the Interior Ministry to put an end to the clashes.
The heads of the security services and internal affairs ministry gave the protesters a deadline of 18 00 local time (16:00 GMT) to put an end to the clashes, warning they would "use all the possible methods" to end it.
The outcome of the Djibouti talks, the installation of an Islamist leader, Sheikh Sharif Ahmed as president, has worsened the situation, a fact analysts put down to a clash of egos between Sheikh Aweys and Sheikh Ahmed.
Cable networks are staging more debates than ever, obliging candidates to build their fall schedules around preparing for and traveling to the slickly produced televised clashes, and putting a premium on skills different from those of retail campaigning.
