That's the idea of the day from National Journal's John Mercurio:

With so much attention being paid to this town's favorite mid-summer parlor game, here's a semi-novel idea: What if presidential candidates no longer kept their VP searches under lock and key? What if, instead, they opened up the process to intense scrutiny and public debate by voters and the media?

They could hold open-press town-hall meetings with each short-lister, essentially taking them for road tests before announcing their final choices. Voters wouldn't get to, well, vote for these guys, but they could at least size them up, kick the tires and let their preferences be known.

Go with me, here.

Doing so would greatly reduce the "risk" that's widely associated with selecting a wild-card running mate. By the time the VP nominees are chosen, voters and the media already would have conducted their own thorough vetting, a process that would greatly diminish the potential for duds or flops. It also might reduce the significance of the entire choice, which, despite the attention it draws during the weeks leading up to the announcements, rarely has an impact on the election's outcome and rarely results in an eventual ascension to power.

An interesting idea that Mercurio admits would never happen. But there are a couple problems I can see with it. First, the vetting process is already somewhat open. Campaigns float names to the media, which then slices and dices them, in essence mimicking the kind of open process Mercurio imagines. Also, the primaries and the summer months sap a campaign's and voters' energy. The announcement of the VP is one way campaigns reignite excitement as they head into the final stretch. But if the process was as open as Mercurio wants it to be, the excitement factor of the eventual announcement would plummet. Campaigns aren't about to give up what is a valuable tool at their disposal.