“Orbán should have been born in a big country like Germany,” a Hungarian acquaintance once told me, in typical East European fashion. “His genius is wasted in Hungary.”
An optimistic observer might retort that everyone has an opinion on Hungary by now — remarkable for a small, landlocked country of under 10 million.
It was no surprise, then, to see Prime Minister Viktor Orbán grab headlines with his most recent round of state visits. Earlier this month, he traveled to Rome for meetings with Pope Francis and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, during which the topic of peace in Ukraine figured prominently. Last week, Orbán visited Mar-a-Lago, becoming one of the first foreign leaders to do so since President-elect Trump’s November victory.
The foreign policy implications are myriad and well-documented. If the Russia–Ukraine war ends soon, it will be in no small part thanks to Orbán’s efforts; likewise, if Europe’s national-oriented political movements gain the upper hand over the entrenched Brussels transnationalists.
Yet, American conservatives should hope Orbán’s Florida visit took a philosophical turn. This is because the Hungarian leader’s political trajectory has arguably prefigured Trump’s. The latter has defined an era of American politics, but his first term was uneven and incomplete. If Trump is serious about national transformation, and not just the thrill of victory, he should look to Budapest.
There Viktor Orbán has been a recognizable figure since the late 1980s, when the young activist defiantly demanded that Soviet troops leave the country during a reburial ceremony for martyrs of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. By 1998, he had become prime minister, but uniformly hostile institutions orchestrated a bitter, close-fought loss four years later. The young idealist began his transformation into a hardnosed political force.
“Orbán’s defeat in 2002, when by any normal political calculation he deserved a clear victory, was traumatic,” wrote John O’Sullivan in his 2015 book on the subject. “He disappeared to a mountaintop, communed with nature, and returned with a new political strategy. Having been defeated because most of the institutions of society, privatized industry and media in particular, were in post-Communist hands, as he thought, he determined that [his political party] Fidesz would have to build up its own institutions … to give it something like equality in the political struggle.” (Nota bene: Mr. O’Sullivan is president of the Danube Institute, where this author is a visiting fellow.)
As in the Trump I era, a pervasive issue in Orbán’s initial four-year term was “the lack of experts needed for governance,” according to Balázs Szolomayer, a Hungarian political analyst. “As a result, the Right had to leave in place people in mid-level managerial positions who did not support its policies … Hungarian public administration was loyal to the earlier party rather than to the government of the day.”
Unlike Trump, Orbán needed two terms in opposition to reclimb the political mountain. He suffered a second agonizing defeat in 2006, and the post-communist, lightly rebranded Socialists’ hold on power appeared unshakeable, particularly as they enjoyed widespread support in the West.
“All those concerned hand-wringers, principle-lovers in Brussels and Washington who are now preoccupied with the fairness of the media and the electoral system in Hungary, oddly weren’t when Orbán was in opposition,” wrote British-Hungarian novelist Tibor Fischer. “He still had to fight … almost everything.”
That fighting left him wiser, and the 2006 defeat proved a blessing in disguise: the Socialist-controlled government thoroughly discredited itself during that second term, and Orbán stormed back to power with a supermajority in 2010. He hasn’t lost again.
Trump, like his Hungarian counterpart, is a brawler and a gifted political operator. Both are willing to pivot on issues and make unorthodox personnel choices. After this, the differences begin to mount. Orbán reportedly devotes one day per week to reading books on philosophy, history, and political theory. He certainly meditates on the Hungary of his grandchildren, and of their grandchildren. His raison d’être might be described as “the will to survive,” the subtitle of Bryan Cartledge’s 2011 survey of Hungarian history. It is an instinct of all Hungarians, who have murky origins in Central Asia and find themselves surrounded by Germans, Slavs, and Romanians.
Trump the real-estate tycoon and television star had little need for such a survival instinct. The reminted president, fresh off assassination attempts and his own time in the political wilderness, has offered signs of a more reflective side. Thus, the leaders’ Mar-a-Lago summit need not have been as one-sided as it might seem. Trump would do well to understand Orbán the strategist, not merely Orbán the politician.
Here other Americans have missed the mark. Outgoing activist-cum-Ambassador David Pressman effectively ended his tenure in Budapest with an anti-Orbán speech on America’s Election Night, in which he accused the prime minister of “playing the odds at the casino” and “gambling with our alliance.” (To his credit, he served up comic relief: “I don’t do politics,” he maintained. “I represent the United States of America, not a political party within it, and I don’t comment on partisan politics, ever.”)
Dostoevsky would have noted that gamblers generally don’t win, and they certainly don’t win consistently. Orbán didn’t merely flip a coin in the U.S. presidential race. He asserted confidence in the former president in the darkest wilderness days when Republicans floundered through the midterms and Ron DeSantis was ascendant. He recognized the death throes of the neoliberal order and positioned Hungary to sidestep the convulsions. He has smashed all domestic political comers from left, right, and center, and with all manner of foreign backing. In 2026, he will seek his fifth consecutive term with a parliamentary supermajority.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration’s plenipotentiary returns home devoid of positive achievements. (There were negative ones — China and Russia gained influence at America’s expense, and a longstanding U.S.–Hungary double-tax treaty was terminated.)
The European political establishment is writhing like a decapitated snake. France, Germany, and the United Kingdom face political and economic crises. In response, their governments have cracked down on speech and dissent and floated sending troops to Ukraine. The West’s coup in Romania was cartoonish and laid bare the hypocrisy of the “defense of democracy” discourse. Suddenly tiny Hungary is something of a power broker. I leave it to statisticians to calculate those odds. (RELATED: Biden’s Last Gasp Subverted Romania’s Democracy)
Fischer relates an anecdote from a journey with a young Orbán to a provincial town in Hungary. The future prime minister insisted on scouring the vicinity of a vacant station for a working ticket machine. He asserted a ticketless ride would offer ammunition to his political opponents. “And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why Viktor Orbán runs Hungary. I can categorically assure you no one else … would have bothered to get a ticket. I doubt any of them would have even thought about it.”
It is the essence of Orbán that friend and foe alike tend to miss when they describe a misplaced genius or a reckless gambler. It is through this sheer force of will that Hungary figures so prominently in foreign affairs. And it is why Viktor Orbán surely counts among this autumn’s most consequential callers to Mar-a-Lago.
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