Maybe you can go back to the McCain-Clinton ticket and then she can just wait him out. Have Bill going around the country stirring up problems and McCain's heart is likely to go out.
McCain-Clinton '08? Obama-Hagel? That's the Ticket
The Democratic and/or Republican nominee could do what Lincoln did -- reach out to a leader of the other party as a running mate at the nominating convention. Another scenario, which I prefer, would be for the two parties to nominate their respective tickets and wage a traditional partisan campaign on the issues, so that voters could see each party's approach and weigh their preferences. After the election, the winner would ask his or her vice president-elect to step down (and become, for example, secretary of state) while inviting the defeated presidential or vice presidential candidate from the other party to serve as vice president. This plan would ideally be announced during the campaign -- with the vice presidential candidate agreeing to act as a placeholder on the ticket -- so that the electorate would be aware of the commitment to a bipartisan presidency.
In this scenario, the vice president could be selected after the election by the Electoral College, which would presumably honor the president-elect's request to vote for the president or vice president of the defeated party. Or the selection could occur after the inauguration, with the newly sworn-in vice president resigning and the resulting vacancy filled, under the 25th Amendment, by a majority vote in both houses of Congress. The advantage of this latter method is that it would receive Congress's ratification of the concept of a bipartisan presidency.
There are any number of provocative possibilities for a bipartisan ticket in 2008. Imagine the buzz if Republican John McCain and Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton committed to making the other vice president in the event that either won the election. Pick any combination of other names in the current field of potential candidates: Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Chuck Hagel; Democrat Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Republican Mitt Romney; Democrat John Edwards and Republican Michael Bloomberg; Democrat Bill Richardson and Republican Rudolph W. Giuliani. Any of these bipartisan pairings, in any permutation, would create a stir -- and a dynamite ticket. (Okay, strike one possible combination -- there's no way we'll see a Clinton-Giuliani ticket, or vice versa; not only does the Constitution forbid it, as they're both from the same state, but their personal chemistry would preclude it, too.)
Will it happen? In the end, political realism will be the determining factor. If it appears that a bipartisan ticket could enhance the chances of victory, and if any party leader embraces the need to make this a reality for the country's sake, then yes, it's likely to happen.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/12/AR2007011201956_2.html
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