Corruption Is the Killer App
What Hungary Just Taught America
By the time Viktor Orbán shuffled to a microphone on Sunday night to concede, his face bloated and the gray of Soviet-era apartment building, his voice doing that wounded-strongman quaver, the autopsy was already written.
Hungarian voters had just ousted the long-serving prime minister after 16 years in power, handing a landslide victory to a pro-European challenger, Péter Magyar, in a bombshell with global repercussions.
With 97 percent of precincts counted, Magyar’s Tisza party had taken 138 of 199 seats on 53.6 percent of the vote, while Fidesz collapsed to 55 seats and 37.8 percent. Turnout cracked 77 percent, a record in post-Communist Hungary. That’s not just a win. That’s a blowout for the ages, a beatdown beyond the eager spin of Moscow and the Trump Administration. (But I repeat myself.)
