then the president should boycott the opening ceremonies."

The Republican nominee, John McCain, has thus far been playing for time, caught between popular dislike for China and the fact that a Republican president, George Bush Jr., has declared that sports and politics are differing realms. McCain's spokesman says his boss condemns "the brutal oppression" of Tibet, and advises the president to "keep his options open".

But that's a fence-straddling posture which McCain, eager to burnish his reputation as a straight-talking, two-fisted kind of guy, will find hard to maintain. If he finds it politically necessary to call on Bush to avoid Beijing this August and go off to Texas and ride his mountain bike instead, the President will be in an awkward spot. Bush, a big sports fan, yearns to go to Beijing. Such outings are among the few pleasures left for a deeply unpopular president who will at that point be four months shy of retirement.

Pious talk from the White House about keeping sports and politics apart will certainly raise a snigger in the Kremlin, whose

denizens will remember that in 1980 President Jimmy Carter led an international campaign which in the end prompted 62 nations - including the US, West Germany and Israel - to boycott the Olympics in Moscow because the previous year the Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan.

In 1984, a year after the US had invaded Grenada, the Olympics were held in Los Angeles. No Western nation felt the need to boycott, though Russia and 13 of its allies did stay away, citing only "security concerns".

The official position of the US government has long been that Tibet is part of China. Cheap goods from China sold through Wal-Mart and other chains are a vital prop for lower-income Americans reeling at the inflation in the price of fuel, milk and other essentials.

A boycott by Bush could lead to reprisals by a furious Chinese leadership, which could make life difficult for the US in any number of ways. Life is not as simple as it was in 1980, though John McCain appears to think otherwise.