I watched Senator John McCain during the hearings, grilling Secretary of Defensiveness Rumsfeld about the torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Then I saw him last night on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, where he got huge applause from a normally very-liberal crowd. Man, if all Republicans were as cool as McCain, they might not look so evil in my eyes.

I’ve got to think that there’s a significant number of Republicans who hate what Bush & Co. are doing to the image and legacy of their party. And it was a shame what they did to smear McCain — a former POW and war hero — when he ran for president in 2000.

McCain was promoting his new book, “Why Courage Matters”. While Stewart never asked him the obvious question, McCain’s own words will force me to ask it. McCain said he’s never seen the country more politically divided than now. Half the country is red states and the other half blue. And America needs to rise up above the partisanship that is dividing us and get to work on solving some real tough issues.

So here’s the question: Would you consider running as a Vice Presidential candidate with John Kerry?

Now, he’s been asked that a few times before, and he’s always given an emphatic “no.” And I can understand why. Essentially, McCain would be betting his entire career on a roll of the dice. If he ran with Kerry and lost, he’d lose his Senate seat in heavily conservative Arizona. He’d alienate the Republican party elite and lose their favor forever, but he’d also be out of tune with the Democratic party. He’d be a man in the wilderness.

There is precedent for a split ticket. Abraham Lincoln ran for president as a Republican with a former Democrat, Hannibal Hamlin. It was an effort to balance the ticket in the face of a huge divide in the electorate preceding the Civil War.

So how much more “civil war”-like could we be without actual fighting than we are now? I call on McCain to prove why courage matters. A Kerry-McCain ticket would signal a sincere desire to end partisanship. Republicans who are anti-Bush would have somewhere to turn. McCain and Kerry are both Vietnam vets who could run this war properly. McCain could have his revenge against the Bush hacks that doomed his presidential run.

I think that ticket could change American politics for the better.

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