Bush and Gyurcsány: The Secret White House Tapes, Part II

It was chaos as usual last week in the playpen of Hungarian politics. The kicking and screaming started when opposition party Fidesz yelled that Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány's friends were lying like big fat dirty liars when they said that US President George W. Bush told Feri's gang during their recent meeting in Washington that he liked them better than the Fidesz gang. Apparently, Feri had been going around telling people that Dubya's gang told them that they were still super P.O.'d that MIÉP, a small group of very maladjusted kids sometimes seen hanging around with Fidesz, had said America "deserved" getting savagely ambushed on 9/11, and that Fidesz hadn't been a good pal and beaten the crap out of MIÉP for saying it. So now the Fideszzies are sending a note to Dubya's uncle (US Ambassador George Herbert Walker) asking him to tell his nephew to tell everyone what was actually said during his 50-minute play session with the Feri boys.

While roughly 99% of whatever Fidesz says can be safely laughed off or ignored, I think they may be on to something here. For years, various American officials (most notably experimental hair care product test subject/former US Ambassador Nancy Goodman Brinker) have been peeing in the pool of Hungarian public life by conducting a whispering campaign against Hungary's nationalist parties, while at the same time ostentatiously claiming in public to be non-partisan.

This is just the kind of commie BS we here in the US can get behind!

Of course, there are perfectly good reasons for Washington to favor the ruling Socialists over Fidesz. Because of their roots as the former local branch of Kremlin, inc., the Socialists tend to neatly fall into line behind big foreign powers, while their takeover of many of the country's business assets after the political changes made them the natural party of business, which is also an attractive trait in the eyes of a commercially-minded country like the US. By contrast, the Hungarian right is a big prickly ball of nationalist grievances, and, thanks to the ex-komcsi shanghaiing of the new "market" economy, about as pro-market as the average North Korean vice-commissar of non-ferrous metals.

But by seeming to privately favor one side over the other, the US is only serving to further pollute the fever swamp of Hungary politics. To paraphrase the famous historian Richard Hofstadter, Fidesz epitomizes the paranoid style of politics. And you don't help make people less paranoid by talking behind their backs, or letting others say you are. So I hope that George's nephew gets the message, and stands up like a man and says whether he told Feri's boys that Fidesz are a bunch of losers.

Unfortunately, all the yelling and screaming over whether the White House gang talked trash about Fidesz has obscured another, far more intriguing question about Gyurcsány's powwow with Bush: did they talk economics?

I assume they couldn't have spent the entire 50 minutes talking about reforming the visa application process for Hungarians. (Or 45, if you factor in five minutes of grousing about Fidesz.) And what's there to say about Iraq, Afghanistan, bird flu, and global warming that hasn't already been said, or that has anything remotely to do with Hungary? But both countries currently face economic challenges that are as similar as they are fright-making. This suggests to me that the two leaders must have shared at least a few words about the pickles their two economies are in, possibly something along the lines of this:

Bush: Prime Minister, my economics team tells me that you are having a real tough time with your budget.

Gyurcsány: Unfortunately yes, Mr. President.

Bush: And to keep the economy rolling and your head above water, you've been borrowing money from abroad as fast as you can, at any price, while your consumers have piled on an unsustainable level of debt.

Gyurcsány: That too, Mr. President.

Bush: And now the IMF and all the other policy watchdogs are barking like mad, saying your whole economy may crash at any moment.

Gyurcsány: It's really starting to jangle my nerves.

Bush: And let me guess: Your domestic opponents, who spend money like fashion models in a shoe store whenever they get in power, are scoring points by calling you fiscally irresponsible, while at the same time demanding that you spend even more.

Gyurcsány: Life is so unfair.

Bush: And even though you came into power with plans to foster a more responsive, streamlined government, you are now likely to be remembered as the guy who made the whole thing even more bloated and screwed-up than ever, while leaving the country in hock up to its eyeballs and setting the stage for the mother of all recessions.

Gyurcsány: Exactly! So what should I do?

Bush: Darn! I was going to ask you the same thing.

Just to make sure no one burdens Amb. Walker with any more clarification-seeking letters, let me stress again that the above exchange between Gyurcsány and Bush did not happen, at least I sure as hell hope not. Though I can report exclusively one other important bit of inside information from the PM's trip to DC: According to an independent and long-timer source in Washington, at the reception for Gyurcsány at Hungarian Ambassador András Simonyi's residence, they served these itty-bitty-mini töltött káposzta thingies that were simply to die for.

Finally, lest you think I'm being too rough on Gyurcsány and the others, let me conclude with a few tart words about Gerhard Schröder. As you may have heard, Central Europe's leading political leader finally agreed to step aside last week, after trying to hang on as bundeskanzler for several weeks following his party's loss in last month's snap election.

Ever since the changes of 1989-90, I've wondered about the impact that political life in the region's largest democracy has had on its smaller, poorer and more-recently free neighbors. I still don't have a great sense of how much influence the German example has on politics here. But thanks to Schröder, I get the feeling that it hasn't been particularly enlightening.

Unlike many Anglo-Saxon types, I'm not particularly shocked by Schröder's pointless parting shots at the US and the UK, and his graceless moves to make life as difficult as possible for his successor, Angela Merkel. But that's only because it's been several years since I came to the conclusion that the guy is such a louse he makes even the cheesiest Eastern European hack look like Bismarck or Lincoln.

B-bye now!

Yes, I know that Schröder's "red-green" team did enact some reforms to Germany's lunatic system of over-taxation and regulation. But that's like praising a schoolmaster for responding to a fire in the dormitory by telling the kids to relocate from the third floor to the second, because he's busy rogering some of the co-eds on the first floor. Name your fault, and Gerhard had it in spades: he was a liar, a cheat, a bully and a coward, a careless narcissist who never hesitated to do the wrong thing in order to save his own skin. But even that is being too kind, because it suggests he was somehow a great but unsettling force, when in reality he was a towering mediocrity who will be but a distant, unpleasant memory by the time he trades up for his next set of dentures, or wife.

In the final irony, the rumor mill has Herr Schröder slipping into a comfy gig working for Russian financial interests, thanks to his relentless sucking-up to the increasingly retrograde Kremlin, while the person who will have to clean up after him will be the first Western leader born and raised under Kremlin rule. So good riddance to you, Gerhard, you useless blowhard, and best of luck to you, Angie; maybe you'll prove that it takes someone from the East to truly respect and honor the best traditions of the West.