Orbán’s end: For sixteen years, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán was the European Union’s most accomplished chameleon. His expedient shifts from right to center and back to right — his true home — caused havoc in the EU. He vetoed budgets and forged a friendship with Vladimir Putin when no other states would touch him. He then morphed into an apologist for the Ukraine war. Until recently, his constituency admired him as a shrewd nationalist. All that has now ended with a landslide election defeat in which his party effectively lost control of the country to a younger, center-right candidate named Péter Magyar. Orbán’s mystique had been fading, true, but few expected this slaughter. The why is simple enough. The far right that used to serve Orbán so well suddenly became home to a troubling, Big-Stick American president as well as the dwelling place of the Israeli prime minister, a man Orbán severed ties with the International Criminal Court to host. Putin was one thing, but Orbán was now in league with a new and surprising duo of devils, neither one a political admirer of the EU, and this is to put it mildly. Hungary was also grappling with its own economic problems as well as allegations of widespread corruption. Enough was enough, and Orbán was gone in a day, American endorsements made useless since this United States more resembles the old Kremlin than anything traditionally American. What next? Probably closer ties with Brussels and a distancing from both the us and Israeli leadership. Orbán, a masterful Sisyphus, was a marvel at pushing even the most improbable rocks up steep inclines, only to step aside when they began to roll back toward him. Finally, he was not able to get out of the way.