There are some ideas that are the political fireworks of the day. They briefly light up the sky and attract everyone's attention, but then vanish, never to be heard of again.


One such is Boris Yeltsin's idea of a "presidential party." Last December he promised us he was busy working on the idea and it would come to fruition soon. That was the last anyone heard of it.


Another was the much-hyped proposal a few months ago of a "congress of democratic forces" in which all the Russian demokraty would get together and agree on a common candidate for the presidency. First it was going to be held in October, then in the spring, now the democrats have stopped talking about it altogether.


The author of both projects is the chubby pioneer of Russian economic reforms, Yegor Gaidar. Their failure shows the deep malaise he is going through as he struggles with the Sisyphean task of being a loyal supporter of the president, who is also the leader of Russia's largest pro-reform party.


A year ago the presidential party was going to be Gaidar's own, Russia's Choice. But Yeltsin never turned up, as he was scheduled to, at the founding congress. His chief of staff and his top ministers were all there but the president himself decided to give Gaidar's festival a miss.


Since then Gaidar has had the status of favorite outsider at Yeltsin's court. He is welcome to come and call on the president any time, he will get a friendly smile and a handshake, Yeltsin will listen to all his recommendations -- and then, at best, adopt a fraction of them.


Gaidar has gone ahead anyway and founded his party, democratic Russia's Choice, but it's a long way from being a presidential party. The statement from last weekend's party meeting repeated what has become the democrats' mantra of recent months -- we don't like the direction Yeltsin is heading in, but we're going to support him anyway because he's the best we've got.


The dilemma gets more acute every day. How can Gaidar support a president who has filled his government with Soviet-era bureaucrats and farm lobbyists? But how can he not support a president who made his friend and ally Anatoly Chubais the most senior party politician in the government?


The democrats are racked with doubts about Boris and each of them has a different response. He used to be their secret weapon, the guided missile they used to pulverize the communist regime, now he is splitting them right down the middle.


The main symptom of this is the way Gaidar's parliamentary party is imploding. First, ex-Finance Minister Boris Fyodorov led off a troop of defectors, then Yeltsin's "gray cardinal," Gennady Burbulis, detached himself. The latest disenchanted figure is former Welfare Minister, Ella Pamphilova. She said she couldn't stand the parliamentary group's soft stance on the government any more last week and she is now an independent.


Out in the provinces the situation is probably even more critical. The provincial party workers I talked to at last year's congress were the survivors of the democratic movement of 1988 and 1989. They were waging the same fight against the local bureaucrats and state managers in Samara or Volgograd as they had been for the last five years and they saw Gaidar and Chubais as their allies. Back then they were already cool towards Yeltsin.


It's hardly surprising then that the idea of a congress to nominate a single presidential candidate was quietly buried. Gaidar has only got one name to offer so far -- Boris Yeltsin -- but he doesn't want to lose half his party by saying it out loud. So he said this week that they should only agree on a common candidate "when we win the next parliamentary elections," which are more than a year away.


What can a democratic leader do until then? The short answer is bite his nails and wait hopefully. As I see it, he has to pray for one of two outcomes.


Either Yeltsin, bolstered by a stabilizing economy, will lurch back towards the democratic camp and become their undisputed leader once again in 1996. Or Yeltsin will retire and someone else will emerge who is acceptable to the various democratic factions, acceptable to Yeltsin as a successor and genuinely popular. So far I can see only one person who can fit that description and it is Boris Nemtsov, the governor of Nizhny Novgorod.