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...