BAGHDAD, Iraq — Through 22 months of occupation and war in Iraq, the word "America" was usually the first to pass through the lips of an Iraqi with a gripe.

Why can't the Americans produce enough electricity? Why can't the Americans guarantee security? Why can't the Americans find my stolen car?

Last week, as the euphoria of nationwide elections washed over Iraq, a remarkable thing happened: Iraqis, by and large, stopped talking about the Americans.

With the ballots still being counted, the Iraqi candidates retired to the backrooms to cut political deals, leaving the Americans, for the first time since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003, standing outside.

In Baghdad's tea shops and on its street corners, the talk turned to which of those candidates might form the new government, to their schemes and stratagems, and to Iraqi problems and Iraqi solutions.

And for the United States, the assessments turned unfamiliarly measured.

"We have no electricity here, no water and there's no gasoline in the pumps," said Salim Mohammed Ali, a tire repairman who voted in last Sunday's election. "Who do I blame? The Iraqi government, of course. They can't do anything."

Asked about the U.S. military presence, Ali chose his words carefully.

"I think the Americans should stay here until our security forces are able to do the jobs themselves," he said, echoing virtually every senior U.S. officer in Iraq. "We Iraqis have our own government now, and we can invite the Americans to stay."

The Iraqi focus on its own democracy, and the new view of the United States, surfaced in dozens of interviews with Iraqis since last Sunday's election. It is unclear, of course, how widespread the trend is; whole communities, like the Sunni Arabs, remain almost implacably opposed to the presence of U.S. forces. But by many accounts, the election last week altered Iraqis' relationship with the United States more than any single event since the invasion.

Since Saddam's rule crumbled, Iraqis have viewed themselves more or less as American subjects. American officials ran their government, American soldiers fought their war, American money paid to rebuild Iraq.

Indeed, the American project to implant democracy in Iraq often seemed to be in danger of falling victim to the country's manifest political passivity, born of a quarter-century of torture centers, mass graves, free food and pennies-a-gallon gasoline.

The more the Americans tried to nudge the Iraqis toward self-government, the more the Iraqis expected the Americans to do.

As the insurgents caused more and more havoc, and sabotaged more and more of the country's power supply, the Iraqis, not surprisingly, blamed the people in charge. Day by day, many Iraqis' gratitude for the toppling of Saddam seemed to harden into bitterness and contempt.

Even after June 28, 2004, when the United States turned political sovereignty over to the Iraqis, not many Iraqis bought the notion that the interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi was anything other than a caretaker regime, hand-picked by the Americans and the United Nations.

All that seemed to change last Sunday, when millions of Iraqis, the vast majority of them Shiites who figure to profit most from the election, streamed to the polls to vote for provincial councils and a national assembly. Few if any Iraqis had ever voted in anything approaching a free election, yet most seemed to know exactly what the exercise was about: selecting their own representatives to lead their own country.

"Our dilemma is solved," said Rashid Majid, 80, who wore his best jacket to the polls. "We will follow our new leaders, because we have chosen them."

Some Iraqis saw in the election their own liberation, one that many did not feel April 9, 2003. Saddam's regime was not toppled by Iraqis but by the U.S. military, a fact that has lingered in Iraqi minds.

Yet after casting ballots in a free election, conducted by more than 100,000 Iraqi poll workers, many Iraqis said they finally felt free, not only from the terrors of the old regime but also from acute feelings of humiliation about the U.S. occupation.

"The election was a victory of our own making. The Iraqi people voted with their own blood," said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the national-security adviser, apparently referring to the 65 Iraqis killed on election day.

The newfound self-respect that al-Rubaie believes the election conferred on ordinary Iraqis seems to have had an immediate impact on their view of the United States. Suddenly empowered with the vote, Iraqis no longer seem to view America as all-powerful, or themselves as unable to affect events. A result has been a suddenly more accepting view of the United States.

The realism among Iraqis was evident on election day. Amid the euphoria of voting, America, which had almost always been the first topic of conversation, was suddenly evanescent, unmentioned in a score of interviews unless a reporter raised it first. And when Iraqis did talk of America, it was with a reasonableness and patience that had seemed missing, a willingness to balance good with bad, to give credit where it is due.

This transition seemed all the more striking for the fact that Apache helicopters roared over the polling centers every few minutes with U.S. troops manning checkpoints only a few blocks away.

Hachim Shahir, an 83-year-old bricklayer standing in line for hours to vote, was asked how it had been possible for somebody like him to arrive at such a late stage in life without ever having voted, and now finally to have cast a ballot. He thought for a long while, then answered: "America — it was America that did it."

And how did he feel about that?

"America will be good if it completes what it came here to do, to bring us democracy, and then it goes home," Shahir said. "The main thing now is that they keep their promises, and leave. Personally, I believe they will do it."