Hungary Hot Export: Campaign U

Campaign headquarters of the Hungarian Democratic Forum consists of two floors of a fortress-like stone building that until recently housed Communist Party agencies like the headquarters of the workers' militia. On a March morning, the building hums with preparations for the multiparty March 25 parliamentary elections in which the Forum, a right-center coalition linking nationalistic writers and the provincial middle class, is expected to run strongly. The headquarters also has some foreign visitors: two groups of well- intentioned but slightly befuddled American politicians eager to assist Hungary in its transition to democracy.

In Room 22 former California Governor Jerry Brown and a delegation of Democratic Party state leaders are just beginning a breathless one-day inspection tour in which they will boldly pass judgment on Hungarian democratic procedures. Brown is having trouble grasping the significance of the upcoming March 15 national holiday; this is akin to a Hungarian being mystified by American fireworks on July 4. For March 15 is the anniversary of the failed 1848 Hungarian revolution and the date previously favored by anti- Communist dissidents for illegal protests. A Forum leader explains that his party plans to press its rivals to suspend campaigning and join in a day of national remembrance on March 15. To American ears, such an admixture of * restraint and patriotism seems naive. Finally, Brown asks with exaggerated politeness, "What is your political objective?"

Next door in Room 23, unbeknownst to the Democrats, a three-person team from the Washington-based National Republican Institute is advising the Forum on campaign tactics. G.O.P. consultant Richard Galen suggests that the party should boast to the press how many seats it intends to win in the new parliament. But Ferenc Kulin, a Forum official, objects that such specificity would demoralize his party's weaker candidates. Not if you don't identify which seats you fear losing, Galen explains. "All candidates are optimists," he says. "They'll think they're the ones who are going to win." Kulin's response is a textbook example of culture gap. "This may hold true for Americans," he says, "but candidates in Hungary would assume that they would lose. The Hungarian people are not used to being winners."

Such misadventures are more comic than calamitous. But a close look at altruistic American advisers in Hungary prompts the serious question: Can the techniques of democracy be taught?

Even as Congress and the Administration debate ways to assist the fledgling free nations that were once part of the Soviet orbit, the implicit assumption is that the U.S., with its sophisticated political systems, can again serve as the arsenal of democracy. From the Philippines in 1986 to Nicaragua last month, no one can gainsay the worth of impartial poll watchers and international inspection teams. But there is also a missionary strain in the American psyche that can inadvertently trample on foreign customs and cultures under the guise of strengthening democratic institutions. As the Hungarian experience suggests, democracy may be the U.S.'s greatest export, but that does not necessarily mean that American political operatives are the product's best service technicians.