It has long been true that when Presidents have trouble in Washington DC they just pack up and leave town. Sometimes they hide out in their home states, licking their wounds but more often they flee to some foreign country where they can be seen from afar as being Presidential and successful in foreign affairs. This while the home front and Congress burns.

What is uniquely curious in recent events is how both the Governor of California and President Bush both ended up in went to China at exactly the same time and for likely the same reasons. Both men were ducking the criticism and scrutiny of their political setbacks and the rising tide of political attacks. One running from a disastrous special election defeat and the other running from the mounting accusations of pre-war intel manipulation, both suffering growing dissent within their party ranks and then the public opinion polls (Schwarzenegger 38 percent, Bush 36 percent). In fact Bush’s numbers are so low that he now only has popular approval ratings of more than 50 percent, in just three states– Idaho, Utah and Wyoming—with a grand total of 12 electoral votes.

While both of these injured politicians came to China, perhaps seeking some ancient herbal remedies, they could not actually stand being together for fear of infecting one another with the Republican flu of incompetent deceit. There is currently no vaccination available in America for this malady and the current antibiotics seem ineffectual but there are remedies which if, administered will kill the patient but save the republic. Is there a doctor in the House or the Senate?

Yes, there is Dr. Jim McDermott in the House—a Democrat who visited Iraq before the invasion. But he already prescribed an ounce of prevention—and got called a traitor for his pains.

More to Bush’s liking is Dr. Bill Frist, the notorious Senate Majority leader, now under investigation for securities fraud. But he is hardly the one to administer the prescription for anything more than a super-sized version of bungling, cover-ups and lies. Does anyone think that the house of Bush is about to fall? You bet they do. But it won’t be precipitated by the leadership of California’s congressional delegation, typified by the likes of Jane Harman and Dianne Feinstein much more than Maxine Waters or Barbara Lee. It will come at long last when it is clear to everyone but George Bush, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and their God that we have lost the war in Iraq and that not only did this administration get it wrong from the very beginning but that they lied both to Congress and the American people. They will continue in this subterfuge for as long as it keeps them in power.

This, of course, has all the echoes of Watergate and Vietnam combined into one ruinous policy. A war instigated on false premises, the pursuit of a non military solution with the promise of democratization in a country with little tradition of democracy, the slow awakening of the US media to the tragic failure of American war strategies and corruption of US contractors and finally the cascade of resignations, indictments and confessions by unindicted coconspirators– is there an impeachment far behind? One would only hope so.

This is not unexpected. When you look at the trail of scandal left by many of the players in this episode of American politics. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Negroponte and others have a long history in Republican administrations dating right back to the Nixon White House or Reagan’s Iran Contra scandal. They have been in the halls of power for so long that they believe in some kind of inherited right of legitimacy or an impudent sense of self-righteousness to pursue even that which is clearly illegal.

Secret CIA prisons, torture of prisoners, denial of the universal Geneva conventions of War, not even mentioning human rights violations against Iraqi citizens and the circumventing of civil liberties at home, are just a partial list of crimes by the Bush neocons.

In response to Rep. John Murtha, a decorated Vietnam War Vet who recently came out against the Iraq war Vice President Cheney came back recently with, “This is revisionism of the most corrupt and shameless variety”. All I have to ask Cheney is whether this is a confession or an allegation on his part?

The thing is that the closer you get to the truth the more shrill the defense becomes from those who stand accused. Stick to the lie and if you repeat it enough somebody still might believe it. Meanwhile, George Bush is still looking for that unlocked door on the stage in China which seems increasingly symbolic of his and Swarzenneger’s current dilemma– no place hide even in China.