Why not a unity ticket?

When it came to drafting the articles concerning the election of our President and Vice President in our Constitution, the framers envisioned a unity ticket with the first place winner becoming the President and the second place person would become the Vice President. Suffice it to say, that idea went to crap after the Washington and Adams Administration with second place winner Thomas Jefferson not doing his part to unite the country after John Adams won in 1796 and with the tie with the first election between political parties in 1800 which resulted in a tie between Thomas Jefferson and his own Vice Presidential pick Aaron Burr which led to open friction between the two (not to mention an attempt by the then Vice President to set up his own country in the western territories which resulted in his arrest, trial, and acquittal). After those two elections, the Constitution was amended to the system of electing Presidents that we have today. Although specialists in alternate histories drool over what might have been with scenarios like Richard Nixon being John Kennedy's Vice President and Al Gore being George W. Bushes, the idea of unity tickets has not really gained steam. In 1968, Hubert Humphrey did approach Nelson Rockefeller about being his vice president but Rockefeller did not want to leave the Republican Party. In 2008, the extreme right stopped John McCain's desire to make 2000 Democratic Vice Presidential Candidate Joe Liberman his vice presidential candidate.  There was even a movie with Jack Lemmon and James Garner called "My Fellow Americans" where two former political rivals (and ex President) find out they have more in common than they realize and form a unity ticket. Today, there is some talk of Ohio Governor John Kasich forming a unity ticket with Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper. While this seems to be talk, the idea of a unity ticket is appealing with pragmatic centrists whose moderate middle of the road programs would gain the support of the Center Left and Center Right of the political spectrum. With the extremes of both parties on overload, a unity ticket with mature individuals that have a history of making executive decisions and compromises at the state level may be what this country needs.


http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/25/politics/kasich-hickenlooper-2020-unity-ticket/index.html