It's all very well appointing supporters to ambassadorships that consist mainly of holding receptions and staying friends with the country, but Hungary has gone a long way to the right. I recommend the guest posts on Paul Krugman's blog for background:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22krugman%22+%22hungary%22
Their attitude to Roma, and sometimes Jews, is very worrying:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/03/09/287342069/increased-hostility-against-jews-and-roma-in-hungary
A recent article:
Budapest autumn: hollowing out democracy on the edge of Europe
Rightwing prime minister Viktor Orbán is using his huge electoral majority to rewrite the rules, and not just for Hungary
Bernadett Szél, MP and co-leader of a small Green liberal party, cites the events in Kishantos and Budapest as a prime example of the “endless cynicism” of the prime minister and his party, Fidesz, whose actions and policies set him apart in the European Union, and are setting off alarm bells in Brussels and Washington. “Kishantos is a symbol of what Orbán is doing. It’s pure power and pure destruction. Fidesz is the state. The party is the state. We don’t know how to end that.”
In a time of collapsing public confidence in the political classes across Europe, Orbán can claim to be unique – a gifted, popular strongman with the most formidable electoral mandate in the EU. Untroubled by a fragmented and morally bankrupt centre-left opposition, Orbán led his rightwing Fidesz to a landslide victory in 2010. He coasted to a second term last April, won the European elections in May and in October took control of virtually every town and city in Hungary in local elections.
Highly unusually, he has a two-thirds parliamentary majority, meaning that the vast Westminster lookalike on the banks of the Danube in Budapest is a rubber stamp. After his election hat-trick this year, he need not face the voters again until 2018. He shows every sign of using that time to reshape Hungary.
...
The number one item on Orbán’s destroy list appears to be the western democratic model. In an infamous speech to supporters in Romania in July, he declared the western model dead and cited the authoritarian regimes of Russia, China, Turkey and Singapore as the templates to follow. “We are parting ways with western European dogmas, making ourselves independent from them,” he declared. “We have to abandon liberal methods and principles of organising a society. The new state that we are building is an illiberal state, a non-liberal state.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/29/budapest-viktor-orban-democracy-edge-hungarySo it's a worrying political situation, and one that a senator is within his rights to say should be handled by a professional diplomat, not a fundraiser who works in TV. McCain just said it in way that inflames tensions, rather than helping get a better-qualified ambassador appointed.
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