The 14 local councils elected will now have to form coalitions and choose who will serve as their governors – powerful posts with widespread authority over local budgets and security forces. It’s complicated – many provinces had more than seven different parties win seats – and the local deals could be tied to agreements on the national level.

The vote showed support for nationalist parties over parties favoring strong local powers. Parties seen as less religiously led did well (though secular liberals like Ayad Allawi still struggled). Those who lost significant power were the Iraqi Islamic Party (Sunni) and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (Shiite), both which are religious and seen as backing local power over central government. Iraqis increasingly want a strong national state.

Here are some of the choices for the pols in the month ahead.

A Move Against Maliki?

Maliki was the biggest winner and is at the center of all the activity. For example, his list won a controlling 28 seats on the crucial 57-seat Baghdad province council. But that has unsettled his rivals. Kurdish leaders, who want to protect their region’s autonomy, have chafed at Maliki’s efforts to strengthen the central government’s control on the armed forces and oil resources. He’s also worried his previous Shiite coalition partners ISCI, who had been the dominant power in the Shiite south.

Though their numbers in the provincial councils are now lower, the Kurds, ISCI and the Iraqi Islamic Party are still formidable in the parliament (which is not up for election until January) and are supposedly discussing ways to curb Maliki’s burgeoning power. One way would be to hold a no-confidence vote that could turn Maliki into a weakened, caretaker prime minister. But that could also backfire, allowing Maliki to blame his opponents for the government’s failure to provide services, like electricity and water.

The parliament could also try to invoke more of its powers to examine and investigate the prime minister’s offices. It already cut his budget. Any of this could be alarming to American officials, since it could cause paralysis and friction as U.S. troops begin to pull out.

Maliki’s Countermoves

To keep his momentum, Maliki has clearly been seeking to broaden his alliances. After using government forces last spring to pound into submission illegal militias led by renegade Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, he has been reaching out to Sadrist politicians in parliament, negotiating top ministry positions he could offer to their partisans.

He has also made deals with former Sunni adversaries in forming coalitions on the local councils. One is Saleh al-Mutlaq, a parliamentarian whose slate won new local seats. If they can make local deals, it could also win the support of Mutlaq’s parliamentary block in preventing a no-confidence vote.

Increased Cross-Sectarian Coalitions

With Maliki talking to Mutlaq and the ISCI talking to the IIP, it raises the possibility that Iraq will not forever be about ethnic politics, Sunnis banding against Shiites. This is something U.S. officials encourage. It could form reconciliation between the sects and weaken the influence of Shiite Iran, which can exert its will easier when Iraqi Shiites are united.

Iran vs. the United States

The countries fighting for influence in pivotal, oil-rich Iraq will be watching how politicians ally and divide in preparations for the big national elections to be held by the end of January.

One rumor going around the Green Zone is that when former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani recently visited Baghdad, he urged Maliki to run in the national vote as part of the broad Shiite bloc he ran with in 2005. Maliki is reputed to have answered that he would consider it if his Islamic Dawa Party leads the ticket – last time it was headed by the more Iranian-linked ISCI.

The Western media's financial downfall has been felt sharply in Baghdad, where the number of American reporters has dropped significantly over the past year and bureaus are laying off Iraqi staff.

The word has gotten around. I recently met with a leader of one of the Awakening, or "Sahwa," militias, the Sunni tribesmen who fought Al Qaeda and allied with U.S. forces. Abu Azzam lives in the Green Zone's Rasheed hotel now. He was a businessman in the United Arab Emirates before returning to Iraq to lead forces in the Abu Ghraib area and apparently still follows the markets. When I handed him my Newsweek business card he asked in Arabic, "Has this newspaper gone bankrupt yet?"

Not all Iraqis want to let the shoe thrower off the hook and some even agree with the harsh three-year jail sentence Muntadhar al-Zeidi received today from an Iraqi court.

Granted, it's a minority. Zeidi was lauded in street demonstrations in Baghdad and other capitals when the 30-year-old television reporter zinged his two shoes past a ducking President George W. Bush in a press conference here Dec. 14. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, at a lectern next to Bush, vainly tried to block the flying leather. Iraqi security wrestled and pummeled Zeidi and whisked him off to jail.

Zeidi later told the court that he couldn't bear listening to Bush claim success in Iraq while all the reporter could think of was the monumental human loss and suffering of the last six years. He said he viewed Bush as an occupier. Iraqis and other Arabs have hailed him as a national hero. It's probably the majority view, but there's a nuance, too.

Many think he broke an important Middle Eastern and especially Iraqi code that requires hospitality for even reviled guests. It's a little like American Southern hospitality--if someone is in your house, you treat them well as a sign of your own good upbringing and honor. "[Bush] was a guest and a guest should be respected and not humiliated," said a construction worker who wanted to be identified just by his first name, Fawad. "It's our duty to respect him, not because we love Americans but because we love our country. In our tradition as Arabs, even if you see your enemy at a meeting you should greet your enemy as a sign of respect for that meeting."

Zeidi's lawyers made a compelling argument that the sentence was too stiff. They said he should not have been charged under the law against attacks on a foreign leader but rather a lesser crime of insulting a foreign leader.

"Muntadhar would not have dared to throw his shoe at President Bush if Saddam had been receiving Bush, not al-Maliki," said Sabah Shakir Majhool, a university student. "The three years is a fair sentence for his bad behavior." Another man, an engineer, noted that if he had a complaint about Bush, Zeidi could have used his platform as a journalist to express it.

Others may feel more like Ahmed Saad, a 37-year-old grocer who expressed the same anger as Zeidi about the American-wrought chaos of the recent years. "They should honor him instead of punishing him," he said. "He has done what every Iraqi should have done against the criminal Bush, who destroyed the country and caused the killing of young people and children." Or like mechanic Abdullah Mustafa who said, "It's not fair to put a good guy who loves his country and people in prison just because he has done what all Iraqis wish to do. Zeidi's protest did give voice to Iraqis who felt ignored."

Zeidi has already spent three months in jail and, according to family members, has been badly beaten. Even with good behavior, he might not get out for about two years. Elections are scheduled for early next year. Perhaps the Iraqi leadership could show the same nuance as the people have and commute his sentence before then.

--With Hussam Ali, Saad al-Izzi and Salih Mehdi in Baghdad.