Joe Klein recounts in Time a fascinating trip he took to Doha this past weekend, where he moderated a panel at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum. Klein expected his panelists to sound off angrily on the topic: what the Islamic world should expect from the next President of the United States. Instead, the response from panelists was mostly exhaustion.

The first panelist, a member of the Palestinian parliament from Gaza, began with a shrug. "We've made all these arguments before," he said, speaking mournfully. He didn't expect much different from the next President than what Palestinians had gotten from Bill Clinton or George W. Bush--a belated fling at trying to "solve" the Middle East. "Why do they always wait till their last year in office?" he asked, seeming too weary for fury. The next speaker, from Indonesia, wasn't very angry either. He hoped the next President would emphasize soft power rather than military force. The final speaker, a charismatic religious leader from Egypt, didn't want to talk about the next President at all. He wanted to talk about the problems of Islamic youth. But, I pressed, what do you want from the next President? "Change," he said, innocently, "and hope ... for the future."

The Americans in the audience smiled at that: clearly an Obama voter. The notion that the U.S. might elect someone named Barack Obama seemed almost surreal to most of the Islamic delegation. But what was most striking was the overall sense of subdued despair after all the battles and outrages of the Bush years. "The past few years, the Muslims were throwing tables at us," a U.S. Middle East policy expert told me. "Maybe they're just worn out."

The sense of shell-shock is palpable in Klein's account. Reformers, reeling from the United States support for -- and subsequent backpedaling on -- a freer democratic process in Palestine, Egypt and Lebanon, don't know what to hope for. Neither do the Iraqis, some of whom call loudly for U.S. withdrawal while others question Klein worriedly in the hallway, fearing the Democrats' professed plan to withdraw. It's not clear that Obama has the answers, but he has clearly articulated the sense of frustration. Recounts Klein, "As a Libyan said to me, employing an Obamism, 'I think everyone is ready to turn the page.'"