More than a decade before he became Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvili was just another struggling law student with big plans tooling around Manhattan on his bicycle.

"He was ambitious, idealistic, and I think he had something of the American messianic sense that you could use law to change the world," recalls professor Lori Damrosch, who taught Saakashvili in a Columbia law seminar entitled International Institutions in Transition.

"This was at a time of turmoil in the ex-Soviet republics, and he had a lot to say on those topics," she adds, noting that students at the law school were "imbued with this idealistic spirit" and that Saakashvili "absorbed these values."

With his country now bloodied after a clash with Russia and his leadership questioned, the overarching idealism of his New York student days would seem to have been finally shaken.

Critics have certainly come out of the woodwork, saying that the loss of Georgia's breakaway regions, particularly that of South Ossetia, would foment protest to Saakashvili's rule. Italy's foreign minister, Franco Frattini, has said that the war brought on by Saakashvili's futile and perhaps rash attempt to secure the areas "pushed Georgia further away not just from Europe, but also complicates the NATO council in December." And Michael Evans, defense editor for the Times of London, noted that Saakashvili's "military adventure had all the hallmarks of rushed planning and a finger-crossed strategy," adding that the Georgian president gave Vladimir Putin  "the opportunity he was waiting for to stamp his authority over Georgia and at the same time to cock a snoot at the West."

So far, Saakashvili has not wavered. He continues to hammer out a drumbeat of statements aimed at presenting himself as the biblical David, Russia as the corrupt Goliath intent upon creating a new iron curtain, and Georgia as the thin edge of the wedge.

"Let us be frank: This conflict is about the future of freedom in Europe," he wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

He has failed to persuade the West to send in reinforcements. With Russia still marching into new cities, the best news that Georgia could muster so far this week was word that its Olympic beach volleyball team had trounced the Russians in two out of three rounds.

Saakashvili would have likely modeled for a more robust response from the West. Well studied in the intricate dance among nations, he wrote a seminar paper on humanitarian intervention, which focused on ethnic conflicts in the former Soviet satellite states.

Unlike many other 1994 graduates of Columbia Law School, Saakashvili put his training to the test on the world stage.

By 1996, Saakashvili, who idolizes John F. Kennedy and leans politically toward John McCain, had already jettisoned a doctoral thesis at George Washington University Law School, quit the high-power law firm of Patterson Belknap and won a parliamentary seat in the Republic of Georgia (population 4.4 million).

This was the first of many leaps that would, in a short and bloodless coup, move Saakashvili into the presidency, an ascendancy that Saakashvili has said was helped along by the knowledge that he acquired while a law student in the United States.

"He clearly knew what he wanted when he was at Columbia, and he chose his courses very carefully and in a conscious way that didn't follow the usual diet, which is corporate and securities law," says professor George Bermann, who taught Saakashvili courses in European Union law, and transnational litigation and arbitration.

Despite Georgia's setbacks, no one should count Saakashvili out just yet. He has spent the last decade and a half proving that idealism in the most adept hands can be a strong bulwark against even the strongest and most depressing reality.

The man known as Misha abandoned a life of Knicks games and opera nights to turn around the poor, corrupt, and complicated country from which he sprang. He also became a leading light among the wave of twentysomething rat-packers who had washed onto our shores hungry for American-style democracy, then eagerly trekked back home to plant this new-found seed in the dark soil left vacant following the Soviet Union's collapse.

"He is a western person, and a very dedicated person, very dedicated to human rights," notes professor Dinah Shelton, of George Washington University's Law School, adding that when Saakashvili failed to finish his dissertation, his professors joked that his tackling Georgia's weighty issues as its president was no excuse.

Little seemed to stop Saakashvili once back in Georgia. When his mentor, then-president Eduard Shevardnadze, balked at Saakashvili's attempts to tackle official corruption, Saakashvili quit the government and went to work forming an opposition party.

After winning election to the head of the Tbilisi city council, he then used his populist appeal to claw his way back into power during the Rose Revolution of 2003. Again, he was unyielding, breaking with other opposition leaders who proposed talks with Sheverdnadze and sought a more measured approach. Instead Saakashvili and his supporters stormed the parliament chamber where Shevardnadze was holed up, then reportedly chased him from the building under the threat of flowers instead of guns.

Answering critics, Saakashvili told reporters at the time that his style was the type that "mobilizes people here," noting later that "Georgia needs a new way" and that every moment Shevardnadze remained in power meant "losing time."

Despite criticism of some of Saakashvili's methods—and despite evidence that a frustrated Saakashvili turned to a more thuggish approach himself during crackdowns on demonstrators last fall—his many successes spring from the same tight-rope approach.

He has overhauled the police, brought about important economic reforms, increased average salaries, and improved the country's power supply, notes Alexandra Stiglmayer, a senior Brussels-based policy analyst with the independent think tank European Stability Initiative.

"Saakashvili may be a complex personality and he has certainly made mistakes. But he has given the civil society breathing space," she says. "Compared with its neighbors in the region, such as the Northern Caucasus region in Russia, but also Armenia, Azerbaijan, and eastern Turkey, Georgia is more liberal, more open, and more committed to the rule of law."

The question now is whether he can stay in power. His old professors certainly hope their favored son will weather this latest storm.

Professor Damrosch recalls happening upon Saakashvili riding his bicycle when she was visiting Washington at the same time he was pursuing his doctoral studies there. She waved and Saakashvili sailed through several lanes of traffic just to chat.

"The image of Misha on a bicycle—whether in Washington, New York, or the more mountainous terrain of Georgia —conveys something of his energetic spirit," says Damrosch. "I can't think of anything that would slow him down."