After its beloved baseball team suffered a humiliating defeat to the mainland Chinese team at the Olympics last week, Taiwan had to confront another nightmare at home. Former president Chen Shui-bian, the self-styled 'son of Taiwan' held a press conference to apologise for having sent millions of US dollars in unspent campaign contributions to Swiss and Cayman Island bank accounts.
Mr Chen, who stepped down in May, spent the last two years of his presidency battling accusations of corruption that resulted in convictions of a close adviser and his son-in-law. Mr Chen and his wife are defendants in another probe into alleged misuse of state funds, and his administration was badly embarrassed in its last months when it was revealed that US$30 million apparently intended to bribe officials in Papua New Guinea in exchange for recognising Taiwan had disappeared from accounts in Singapore.
Although these charges of corruption and incompetence led the Kuomintang to a majority in Taiwan's legislature and then a landslide victory for the KMT's Ma Ying-jeou in May's presidential election, Mr Chen's core supporters - the 40 per cent who support a sovereign Taiwan - stood by him loyally until last week.
This time, though, he went too far. His admission that he and his wife diverted campaign funds was probably part of a carefully crafted legal strategy that may yet keep him out of jail, but his supporters saw clearly that he had essentially admitted to stealing from them. His former defenders in the pro-Taiwanese media turned on him immediately, with one respected commentator calling him the greatest traitor in Taiwan's 400-year history.
Mr Chen has done tremendous damage to the two causes that have defined his political career. In the first phase, he was a champion of democracy, rule of law and social justice in the face of KMT repression and corruption. Taiwan's newly wealthy urban middle class responded to his calls for clean government with liberal, social democratic values by electing him mayor of Taipei and then president in 2000. In his second phase, Mr Chen discovered that he could expand his base outside urban areas by appealing to Taiwanese nationalism. This latter strategy won him re-election in 2004.
Both causes are now completely discredited for the foreseeable future. While Taiwanese nationalist sentiment remains strong, the movement is leaderless and its supporters are panicked and confused. Mr Ma is a strong advocate of clean government, democracy and rule of law, but his vision of society is deeply tinged by his conservative Confucian values and preference for technocratic solutions.