IT is an unlikely prospect buy one which is not entirely outside the bounds of possibility. The scenario runs as follows the right ward swing in both countries sees 1997 begin with a face off between President Patrick Joseph Buchanan of the United States and President Vladimir Wolfovich Zhinnovsky of the Russian Federation. The possible consequences for international stability I will leave to those readers possessed of catastrophic imaginations.
There are other, more likely and less sinister, outcomes to the polls in Russia in June and in the US in November, but the options open to Russians are narrower and more fraught with danger than those available to their former enemies across the Atlantic.
The field, at this stage, can be narrowed down to four men. In order of their current popularity ratings they are Mr Genaady Zyuganov, the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation the ultra right Mr Zhirinovsky the liberal economist Mr Grigory Yavlinsky and the incumbent President of Russia, Mr Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin who, later today, at the Palace of Youth in his native town of Yekaterinburg is expected to announce that he will run for a second term.
All the signs are that Mr Yeltsin will do so. He has been making statements pronouncing himself as the personification of Russia's stability and progress. He has hinted at a peaceful end to the war in Chechnya and, much to the dismay of the International Monetary Fund, has been making promises to the people which, if implemented, would steer his country on a course for bankruptcy.
Pro democracy figures have called on him not to stand. His former prime minister, Mr Yegor Gaidar, was explicit in his views. If Mr Yeltsin's candidacy was pursued, he argued, there would be a massive anti Yeltsin vote which would favour the Communists. If he were to stand down, the negative vote, which is almost certain to be the major factor in the election, would be turned against Mr Zyugaaov's Communist Party.
Other former friends of Mr Yeltsin have been even less optimistic. His former press secretary, Mr Vyacheslav Kostikov, has resigned as ambassador to the Holy See to write a book about skulduggery in the Yeltsin administration, a topic on which he has no mean expertise.
The former head of Russian TV, Mr Yegor Yakovlev, who held cabinet rank under Mr Yeltsia, has said that Russia's President will stop at nothing to retain power, and a former economic adviser, Mr Anders Aslund, has called on the west in a New York Times article this week to carry out a "fundamental reassessment of President Boris Yeltsin because he has abandoned everything the west has appreciated in him."
In the unlikely event of Mr Yeltsin announcing that he will step down, and there have been quite a few surprising events in his career, it is the likes of Messrs Gaidar, Yakovlev, Kostikov and Aslund who will rejoice.
Should he take the predictable course, Mr Yeltsin will gladden the hearts of more shadowy figures such as his chief bodyguard, the former KGB general, Mr Alexander Korzhakov the head of the Federal Security Service, Gen Mikhail Barsukov the Defence Minister and architect of the Chechen disaster, Gen Pavel Grachev and the First Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Oleg Soskovets, who was the man we saw emerge from the presidential jet Rossiya at Shannon to make his masters apologies and leave.
WITHOUT Mr Yeltsin power, no privileges and these men have no no further opportunity to amass wealth and luxuries.
If he does run, Mr Yeltsin is unlikely to win, but his chances should not be completely ruled out. Already those promises which have put the fear of God into the IMF have begun to bear fruit, and his popularity ratings have started to creep above the 6 per cent at which they have hovered for more than a year.
The favourite in the presidential race is still Mr Zyuganov, whose brand of communism has replaced Marxist dogma with a strident anti western rhetoric for domestic consumption, and measured pro reform statements for export. He is, however, singularly lacking in charisma.
Mr Zhirinovsky launched his campaign last week by undergoing a marriage ceremony in the Russian Orthodox Church to the woman he married in a state ceremony 25 years earlier.
On emerging from the sacred environment of the icons and incense to the infinitely more profane atmosphere of the streets of Moscow, he informed reporters that his grotesquely named Liberal Democratic Party was a white robed virgin which would have group sex with the Russian electorate in June. Judging by last month's parliamentary elections, this proposal will be spurned.
The only democratic politician with a chance of election is Mr Yavlinsky, but in the heel of the hunt his Ukrainian birth and his surname which has Jewish undertones will not help him with an electorate which has become increasingly xenophobia and more openly anti Semitic than at any time in the past.
The Russian voter's abhorrence of another possible candidate, the former president, Mr Mikhail Gorbachev, is such that he stands no chance of regaining office.
The final choice, therefore, is likely to be between Mr Zyuganov and President Yeltsin. The pro communist president of the Federation Council (Upper House), Mr Yegor Stroyev, privately suggests that Mr Yeltsin's policies have converged with those of the communists to the extent that they are virtually indistinguishable.