Chinagate is growing to such magnitudes so quickly that it may actually overwhelm both the Clinton Hedony and abort the Gore administration before it is even conceived.

I haven't discussed this nearly as much as I could have because if I had, I'd have talked about nothing else for months. I've only touched on the highlights from time to time. It just so happens that this week was full of them.

Gore, heretofore an innocent bystander to his boss's scandal tides, was buried by this latest one. It turns out that Mr. Bill, in trademark Clinton SOP, masterminded the sprawling Democrat fundraising racket while keeping it all at a discreet distance (to lessen his own legal exposure, of course). Therefore, he needed a left-hand man (hey, we ARE talking about DEMOCRATS) who would lead the charge for him. And none other than Prince Albert was the choice.

Fat Albert attacked the task with a will. He set up an entire network of solicitation and money-laundering that sucked in over $40 million, and which was operated from federal property (including Gore's West Wing office), using government phone banks and government employees. He was so adamant and blunt in his hustling that even Dem donors say they found his tactics heavy-handed and inappropriate. "Shakedown" has been a frequently used term. He even earned the nickname "solicitor-in-chief" at the DNC. And much of it was a flagrant violation of the Hatch Act, each violation punishable by, among other things, up to three years in federal prison. That Buddhist Temple fundraiser was but the tip of a very putrid iceberg.

Fellow Dems Robert Torricelli and Henry "Nostrildamus" Waxman tried to make their respective hay off of Gore's woes (Waxman by the comical insistence that Dan Quayle be hauled back out of mothballs and flogged some more) as their colleagues continued to insist upon shifting the focus of investigations to the Republican side. But this time the diversionary tactics didn't take, as

Newsweek magazine quoted ex-White House counsel Abner Mikva as warning in a 1995 memo that any fundraising of the type engaged in by the DNC and Clinton-Gore '96 was "illegal." It was quickly decided that Gore go before the microphones and perform one of Clinton's patented mea culpas.

BIG mistake. Bubba could have not only gotten himself off the hook, but picked the pockets of the assembled reporters while he was at it. The Tennessee 2x4 came off sounding like any of us would have sounded in that position: a lying, scheming crook. "I did not do anything wrong, much less illegal" decayed into "Everything I did, I understood to be lawful," which melted down to "I'm proud of what I did, and I'll never do it again," and finally ended with "I'm not subject to legal restrictions." So; there it is. Al Gore, a Big Mac away from the Big Chair, filled to bursting with excuses that Newt Gingrich couldn't get away with (and for HIM they were TRUE) reveals himself to bear the same tyrannical attitude as his superior: "I am above the law."

So well did the Veep do that Clinton had to rush to the rescue only three days later. Thing is, he didn't do much better. Despite the fawning press reports of the prez being "relaxed and resolute," Clinton's defense of Gore and Maggie Williams (Hillary's chief squaw, who also broke the law by accepting a $50,000 campaign check right smack in the White House itself) was rambling, convoluted, and well-nigh incomprehensible. And he was uncharacteristically fidgety and plainly uncomfortable throughout, as though he had the nervous complaint or something - and in a press conference, where he is usually in his element. Truly a sight to behold.

I said a week ago that Bill Clinton is in big, big trouble on this scandal, and now his heir has been pulled down as well. William Safire synopsized it beautifully when he wrote in the New York Times that "The `high crime' of Watergate was Nixon's abuse of his White House power to affect his 1972 re-election. That same offense - the Clinton-Gore White House's abusing presidential power to unfairly influence their 1996 re-election - is at the heart of today's campaign scandal." This one ain't going away, folks, and will only get worse.

So here is a preview, offered without time specifications, but with resolute confidence:

-Al Gore's massive implication in Chinagate is intolerably close to Clinton himself. Mr. Bill has never been loyal to anybody in his life, and he's not about to go down at his sidekick's side. So mark down Al Gore's David Watkins-style resignation (i.e. Willie announces it before the public's AND Gore's very eyes) from the vice-presidency as pick #1.

-Pick #2: Clinton nominates California Senator Dianne Feinstein as Gore's successor, and Feinstein is whisked through Senate confirmation. It makes perfect sense: DiFi is a woman; she's reliably liberal but isn't saddled with a Barbara Boxer-like reputation as a flake; she has both substance and prior executive experience as mayor of San Diego; AND she's from California. In other words, she would be as strong a designated Clinton successor as Gore would be a liability. And the Republicans would be so utterly terrified of the prospect of running against a woman in 2000 that they might not even field a candidate.

-Pick #3: Chinagate, like Watergate did for the Democrats in 1974, produces big GOP congressional gains in 1998 despite the majority's intellectual indolence. But...

-Pick #4: Clinton's masterstroke of replacing Gore with Feinstein knocks them back onto the defensive, and ends any lingering chances of his impeachment.

If I had to give Mr. Bill one piece of honest advice, that'd be it. Time will tell if he takes it.

~ ~ ~

Meanwhile, under the bed, the Republican majority waits and wonders if the other side will EVER run out of blanks. "Nasty stuff, those blanks" said one shell-shocked pachyderm.

Not much is happening in the 105th Congress. Of course, after the heady early days of the 104th, anything would look like a leisurely mosey; but something must be wrong if even genteel GOP moderates are getting antsy. Antsy? Somnolent would be more accurate.

There are lots of different explanatory spins. One is that ever since Speaker Gingrich took a "lower profile" fifteen months ago, the power has returned to the committees, where hours can seem like years and glaciers can become a blur. Another is that Republicans are in no hurry because they're no longer afraid of being thrown out (notice I didn't say "no longer afraid of losing CONTROL; the GOP hasn't been in control of Congress ever since Newt was wounded). And a third is that Republicans, after the flaying they took last year, are loathe to do anything to divert the media's attention from Clinton's neoWatergate troubles.

The above is what the GOP leadership says. House Majority Leader Dick Armey assures his colleagues that over the next few months, "the floor schedule will build to a crescendo of progress on America's agenda." Problem is that he doesn't say what that agenda is. And that reticence is what is so troubling to those of us in the grassroots, who sit in bewildered amazement as the majority pushes through a $2.7 billion tax INCREASE for the Airport Trust Fund. Definitely not a promising harbinger of things to come.

About the only thing of any significance on the GOP's plate was the Balanced Budget Amendment, which, with the two-seat pickup in the Senate, was supposed to be a slam-dunk. But as documented in this space last week, the White House "miraculously" managed to pull enough Dem senators back to bring the measure one vote short of passage - for the third consecutive Congress.

This latest defeat itself was wholly unremarkable - as I also said last week, only 290 Republicans in the House and 67 in the Senate will ever pass the BBA - nor were the by-now tried & true scaremongering tactics the minority used to stop it. But it was the GOP reaction that was little short of flabbergasting.

They were surprised; they were "stung." It was as if they endured the past year of stinking abuse all for the sake of realizing this lone dream - which they thought they WOULD realize. And denied yet again, they finally awakened to the embarrassment they hadn't previously acknowledged - and then magnified it by going on a sustained whining binge.

Belated vows to attack Clinton's budget (which doesn't come close to balancing, BTW, according to either CBO or the Heritage Foundation - where have these people BEEN?); Orrin Hatch waving it in Senate floor debate alongside a towering mound of past federal budgets; Trent Lott and Newt Gingrich huffing and puffing for the cameras. Oh, the shame of it.

This, then, is the wages of fear and timidity and a needless year-plus retreat and the deliberate choice of fighting battles you don't flee on the enemy's turf: your only significant agenda item crashed & burned, your best and strongest issues (taxes cuts, immigration reform, ending racial preferences) abandoned, impotence in the face of crippling opposition scandals, and the Chief Miscreant himself gloating by calling on you to join him in "passing a plan to balance the budget by 2002 while protecting our values, strengthening education, and providing targeted tax relief to working families. It's time to do the REAL work of balancing the budget."

What Republicans should do is piss in Clinton's face, kill his budget dead as a smelt, quickly pass one of their own on the model of the FY 1996 version that Clinton signed, and carry the fight to the aforementioned issues where he and his party are far more vulnerable. What they're going to do, after this past weekend's mortifying House encounter session/inner-child search/navel contemplation seminar/"civility fest" in Hershey, Pennsylvania (Are rapists and their victims ever sent off together to "work through their problems"?), is as the Speaker announced this week: serve as a glorified rubber stamp for Sick Willie.

If the GOP isn't afraid of losing the House in 1998, it's a miracle, because they're afraid of everything else.