“I almost died when for a year and a half we had to pretend we were governing. Instead, we lied morning, evening and night,” he told his fellow Socialists.

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President Laszlo Solyom asked Gyurcsany to publicly recognize his error, saying the news of the remarks had thrown the country into a “moral crisis.” He also chastised the prime minister for “knowingly” jeopardizing people’s faith in democracy.

Gyurcsany defended himself by saying that was he trying to convince his party about the urgent and inevitable need for comprehensive reforms and to change the political culture. ~The Houston Chronicle

It has not been a good week for fans of democracy (for those keeping score, I am not one of these people).  In Thailand, the corrupt Thaksin has precipitated a coup, and in Hungary the revelations of the dishonesty of Gyurcsany and his Socialists has provoked riots, caused the forint to go into steep decline and generally made a mess of a country to which I have a family connection and for which I have much goodwill and affection. 

But imagine that–rioting because politicians in government lied!  What a quaint notion.  Were we to do the same, all of our cities would have burned to the ground long, long ago.  There is something profoundly wrong with a form of government that not only rewards deception with power, as democracy routinely does, but positively encourages deception as a necessity in fighting elections.  You almost have to admire the idealism of people who would sooner riot than accept a dishonest political leader, but then you have to ask: wherever did they get the notion that democracy had something to do with honest government?