A few days ago, before the Iowa cacuses, I said to my wife “Want to know my presidential dream team? Obama and McCain. Wouldn’t that be cool?”

“Who would be president?”, she asked, with her usual ability to get to the core of an issue.

“Hmmm…”, I replied.

But that got me to thinking. There’s probably no practical, nor even legal, way for the two candidates to be running mates in any national election.

But what if each won the nominations of their respective parties and launched campaigns that built up America instead of tearing each other down.

What if we saw a new style of “debate” where two intelligent, articulate, passionate people sit alone on a stage and just talk for 90 minutes about their beliefs — without self-serving moderators, without an audience to play to, without rancor and pettiness.

Just two adults who find more common ground than differences, who can disagree without reviling the other’s stance, who can make Americans think “Golly, either one of these guys could do the job.”

Now, that would be something to look forward to.

That tiny spurt of confidence in our national future could be the first step toward putting the train wreck we have now back onto the tracks, inching toward recovery.