In the spirit of this post, check out the New York Times‘ spirited account of the Iranian presidential election, which portrays Ahmedinejad as desperate and out of touch and flailing. Wishful thinking, to be sure, but something appears to be happening around Mir Hussein Moussavi. From the hardliner perspective:

“The atmosphere is hotter this time; that is basically true,” said Hossein Shariatmadari, the general director of Kayhan, a hard-line government newspaper and representative of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But Mr. Shariatmadari offered a different reason.

“The principalists have shown to the people what serving the people really means,” he said, using a word he prefers to “fundamentalists.” “And on the competing side, they have seen that they are up against a serious competitor.”

 The piece is appropriately caveated, and cleverly notes that there’s always a relaxation on the boundaries of political speech preceding an Iranian election. But I wonder if a Moussavi victory — an "unofficial" poll, whatever that means, shows him ahead — would indicate that the clerical rulers of Iran recognize that Ahmedinejad has turned Iran into an international embarrassment. The clerical regime vets presidential candidates to ensure that debate occurs within proscribed boundaries, but my understanding is that’s the major component of clerical meddling, meaning that (typically) if a candidate surprises the clerics, it’s in their interest to respect the outcome rather than reveal that their "democracy" is a sham. (There are limits to this, though.) So maybe a Moussavi victory won’t signify anything about the regime’s relationship with Ahmedinejad or the reversal of his mistakes, and it’s that regime that controls foreign policy. 

But even if the clerics don’t necessarily recognize Amedinejad’s disgraces, the Iranian public seems to.

“Ahmadinejad is crazy, he’s an idiot,” Maryam Massoumi, a 27-year-old consultant, shouted above the din. “He’s making this country into a place everyone wants to leave.”

 That’s an anecdote from a Moussavi supporter, so it no more proves that the Iranians hate Ahmedinejad than a quote from me calling Bush an asshole in October 2004 would prove that the American people hated Bush. (And it proves even less, since America possesses an actual democracy, not one in which a panel of clerics decide who we can vote for.) I also take commenter Karateschnitzel‘s point that "anything even remotely resembling a nod or endorsement will inevitably backfire on us." Still, an Ahmedinejad victory will be an especially depressing spectacle to behold after these anecdotes have accumulated.

Update: New America has its own unofficial election survey that has Ahmedinejad kicking Moussavi’s ass, 34 to 14 percent. (There are a bunch of other candidates.) Sigh.

Update 2:  Newsweek says it has a "secret poll" showing Moussavi winning on the first ballot.