Senator McCain keeps saying "no," but more and more influential pols are pushing him to step up and accept the role of "unifier." They believe he can marginalize the extreme wings of both parties. With his unquestioned integrity on issues both domestic and foreign he can silence the nutcases who appear intent upon thrusting American democracy towards a rabid level of ideological partisanship that threatens to spin the nation into a political "civil war," wherein destroying ideas takes precedence over rational governance. Let us hope Senator McCain will seriously consider putting national interests over loyalty to a party that has certainly done him no favors outside of Arizona, in fact far to the contrary.
McCain, of Arizona, "categorically" ruled out standing with Kerry, but Biden, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he had no second choice.
"I'm sticking with McCain," Biden said.
"I think John McCain would be a great candidate for vice president," Biden, from Delaware, said on NBC's "Meet the Press," where the two senators appeared together to take questions on Iraq and other subjects.
"Do I think it's going to happen? No," he said. "But I think it is a reflection of the desire of this country and the desire of people in both parties to want to see this God-awful, vicious rift that exists in the nation healed, and John and John could go a long way to heal in that rift."
McCain, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee and in line to take over the Senate Armed Services panel in two years, endorsed Biden's call for bridging the political gap between Democrats and Republicans.
"There's too much partisanship in America, and there's too much partisanship in the Senate," he said. "And we're not doing our job as our constituents expect us to do."
"I will always take anyone's phone calls," McCain said of any call he might get from Kerry, a fellow decorated Vietnam War veteran. "But I will not, I categorically will not do it."
Kerry said on Wednesday that McCain would be his first choice to replace Donald Rumsfeld, President Bush's secretary of defense now wrestling with the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal.
