Remember that rainy day you were saving for Gordon and George? Well it’s pouring.

While Senator Barack Obama was looking humble and presidential this week during his world tour, it was a week President George Bush and his party’s presumptive nominee and hopeful successor John McCain along with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown who was handed yet another by-election drubbing, this time at the hands of the SNP (Scottish National Party) would prefer to forget.

While Obama hit all the right notes with Israeli, Palestinian, Iraqi, Middle East and European leaders who have to now been cool to US interests after six years of an expansionist war and speaking to a German crowd of 200,000 in Berlin… John McCain was last seen sniping in German heritage neighbourhoods of Ohio when it was he who suggested the tour in the first place.

While the elected Prime Minister and Vice President of Iraq both endorsed Barack Obama’s withdrawal timetable of 16-months the Bush/Cheney team first said it was a bad translation (oops, it was PM Maliki’s own German translator that provided the commentary) and then desperately tried to get them all to backdown from their statements and back on the Administration’s ranch. They refused.

With all three major US network news anchors on tour with Obama this week, McCain was struggling to find relevance and even flirted briefly with naming his Vice President in an attempt to steal headlines his way.

What worries though is that the naiveté, ethnocentric tunnel vision and polarisation of American voters is sick enough that his bravura performance abroad lost ground in polls at home to a Republican candidate who has made more mis-steps than a Michael Flatley line dancer with vertigo.

If the American electorate is unable to distinguish between a world leader who could bring respectability in a world of global markets and a protectionist war relic Bush apologist with a hair trigger temper and a too old finger on the nuclear launch button, then we truly get the government we deserve.

Gordon Brown cannot catch a break. A decent if somewhat dour man, he was handed a tough deck of cards by outgoing PM Tony Blair who stayed far beyond his sell-by date. I can’t decide if he pulled a Hillary Clinton or she pulled a Tony Blair as both sacrificed their party thinking everything was always about ME, ME ME! By hanging in until just before the economy turned he was able to leave Gordon Brown with the blame and the bill. He is now running full-time to become the first elected president of the EU whilst talking about and changing faiths while burning up lots of air miles trying to solve the Middle East crisis.

But it went from bad too worse this week for Gordon when a traditional Labour Party stronghold seat in East Glasgow was lost not to the Tories but an upstart Scottish National Party hellbent on bringing forward a referendum vote for Scottish succession from the United Kingdom.

Gordon is on the ropes and even his own party is muttering about replacing him as PM before an embarrassing general election defeat in 2010. Although it is hard to believe the UK would bring back the Tories, and even harder to understand the head of the party being smug young gun David Cameron, it looks more inevitable each day as Labour suffers from self-inflicted wounds of all kinds.

And where was George? It’s hard to imagine a more lame duck President than George W. Bush. As the sharks circle around every legislative initiative from off-shore drilling to social security, the latest game to hit Washington is crossing party lines to deny W even the smallest of victories. His election campaign dance card is as empty as television’s Ugly Betty’s. Air Force one will save thousands of taxpayer dollars in jet fuel this fall since no one wants him to campaign on their behalf and even his own party is wondering what to do with him at their upcoming convention. Even former republican conservative Bob Barr, running as an independent has a higher approval rating.

The FISA Telecom bill was his last gasp and even that has enough holes in it that the companies the bill shields for violating your privacy could still face criminal charges far more damning than civil damages.

So as for your bucket list gentlemen, things to do before you kick the electoral bucket George, John and Gordon, it’s a pretty short one. I’d start with a tribute to Richard Nixon and a few of his pre-resignation favourites:

• Get down on your knees with a senior advisor and pray.
• If that doesn’t do it George and John can wander around talking to presidential portraits and Gordon can do the same to former PM’s at number 10.
• Find underling scapegoats and fast!
• Flash the V for victory sign everywhere.
• Find Bin Laden.

If that doesn’t work, Gordon needs to find a hip young MP a la Senator Obama and put him against ‘slick Davey.’ It looks like substance no longer matters in the UK either. McCain needs to step aside for a 40-something young up and comer for the good of the party and W needs to take early retirement or spend the rest of the year in Crawford at the ranch.

It couldn’t hurt.