About democracy, Hungarian style

I’ll never forget a conversation with a multi-billion dollar US Catholic endowment

Amidst the usual gossip, he shared a story that had everyone’s heads spinning: a prominent VC had taken a Ukrainian refugee into his home, only to have an affair with her and leave his wife in a chaotic scandal

Being perhaps naive, I asked if that wasn’t a red flag in his DD. My logic was: if a GP is disloyal to his spouse, how can he be loyal to his LPs? If he manages his private life this poorly, how can I trust him to be honest when a fund hits a rough patch? The investor looked at me with professional coldness. He said that while his Catholic convictions made him respect the sanctity of marriage, his job was to assess the ability to generate returns. Private life, he insisted, was none of his business

I tell you this because Péter Magyar, the newly elected PM of Hungary, triggers that exact same doubt in me. I wonder what goes through the mind of the average voter to miss the warning sign glowing on this man’s forehead. He is no "outsider" fed up with politics. He is the prodigal son of Orbán’s own regime

Magyar was the aristocracy of the system, plugged into the highest levels, living off state contracts and golden board seats for 14 years. He presents as the antithesis of Orbán when, in reality, he is his most perfect creation. He rose to fame not through a brilliant economic proposal, but by secretly recording his then-wife (and then regime's Minister of Justice) in their kitchen. He used those intimate recordings to sink the career of the mother of his children and catapult his own toward power

How can a country trust the honesty of someone who destroyed his own family to win a political game? It is fascinating and terrifying that people believe he will look out for the common good when there isn’t a shred of evidence he has ever done so. His only known "act of charity" has been promoting himself to the highest office

Honestly, I admire people who are capable of dissociating things this way. I admire the LP who says cheating on your spouse is a private matter and that money is a different folder. I admire the voter who says throwing your ex-partner into the fire is just "one of those things" and that the relationship with a Prime Minister is purely patriotic

But that’s how things go. In the end, we forget that every relationship (commercial, patriotic, romantic) is, at its core, an alliance between two people. If someone is capable of behaving miserably toward those they claim to care for, imagine what they will do to a public they see only as a rung on a ladder

I don’t believe in compartmentalized personalities. I believe in consistency. If you claim to be something, it isn’t enough to shout it at a rally, you must have proven it when the cameras were off and you had nothing to gain

I don’t trust the empty words of those who find redemption the day before asking for something

I trust facts, track records and how you treat others when no one is watching