The Republicans gathering in Minnesota for their national convention face an interesting challenge: Hiding George W. Bush under an invisibility cloak.

With his approval ratings hovering miserably around 30 percent, the president is only slightly more popular than Dick Cheney, who is only slightly more popular than Hannibal Lecter.

So what do you do with these two guys?

If you don't let the president and vice president speak at their own party's convention, it would be seen as an embarrassing admission that they've botched things beyond anybody's worst fears.

But if you do let them speak -- as they will, in St. Paul -- you run the risk of reminding the country what a fateful and costly mistake was made in 2000.

These days, neither Bush nor Cheney often appear at unscreened public events. Instead they out turn for carefully selected audiences that are not likely to boo, hiss or jeer.

Inside the convention hall, GOP delegates will receive the two men with respect and perhaps even a degree of warmth. It's the millions of undecided voters watching on television that John McCain and the Republicans must worry about.

Since locking up the nomination in the spring, McCain has been attacking Barack Obama almost nonstop, a strategy calculated to divert attention from the colossal mess made by the Bush-Cheney tag team.

The current administration has such a paltry list of achievements that McCain has very little to trumpet, or embrace. Because he's been so unwilling to criticize the president, and so unable to set himself apart, his only option is to focus his rhetoric on Obama.

One of the issues on which McCain been in chorus with Bush and at odds with the Democrats was opposing any timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq. Suddenly, Bush has whirled 180 degrees and agreed to precisely such a pullout schedule.

With U.S. polls showing widespread support for American withdrawal, McCain, ironically, now finds himself scrambling to realign himself with a president from whose shadow he must soon escape -- if he hopes to be elected.

Considering the public's fed-up mood, Obama ought to be cruising toward a double-digit win. Yet the race remains extremely close, which makes Bush's role at the convention even more dicey.

The president is not here

A photograph of him and McCain beaming arm-in-arm would be a gift to the Democrats, who've been casting the Arizona senator as a faithful acolyte and ideological soul mate of the president.

The longer that Bush and Cheney hang around St. Paul, the more difficult it will be for Republicans to throw that invisibility cloak over the past 7 ½ years.

Without the president in the house, it would be easier to:

• Pretend that Hurricane Katrina never happened and that nobody in New Orleans suffered or died needlessly.

• Pretend our economy isn't in the crapper. Pretend that we don't have the largest deficit in history, and no prayer for a balanced budget.

• Pretend our energy policy is innovative and farsighted, and not hijacked by the oil companies.

• Pretend the mortgage crisis and housing crash weren't avoidable.

• Pretend that the war in Iraq has been a huge success, and that we couldn't have spent that trillion or so dollars on problems here at home. Pretend there really were weapons of mass destruction.

• Pretend the Taliban isn't resurging more violently than ever in Afghanistan. Pretend we actually caught Osama bin Laden and brought him to trial.

That's a whole pile of pretending, and McCain's dilemma is obvious. He needs to decisively cut himself free from the president without sounding too much like his opponents.

Bush and Cheney are both set to speak on Monday, early in the convention. The big question is, will they reappear on stage with McCain on the night of his acceptance speech?

Nothing would make Obama and the Democrats happier, and nothing would make McCain's campaign managers more jittery.

Cheney can be dodged, but not the president. Should McCain embrace him? Shake his hand? Chuck him on the shoulder? Pat him on the back?

It's a tricky scene that GOP strategists must have grappled with as they choreographed the grand finale. While McCain can't afford to be perceived as being too chummy with Bush, at the same time he can't behave as if the man's got cooties.

I predict a hug, brief and collegial. And a photo that will be up on Obama's website within seconds.

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