WONKETTE EXCLUSIVE: DIRTY INSIDER SECRETS ABOUT JOHN KERRY'S FAILED ATTEMPT TO GET JOHN MCCAIN TO BE HIS RUNNING MATE IN '04!

Democrat John Kerry and Republican John McCain have a lot in common: the name John, the Vietnam War, and their insanely wealthy, animatronic wives. So it's only natural that Kerry tried mightily to get McCain to join his awesome losing team in 2004, theorizing that a warmongering Republican veep candidate would really get Democrats pumped. Thanks to highly placed Wonkette publishing spy "Matt," who got an advance copy of Paul Alexander's new book about Karl Rove, Machiavelli's Shadow, Americans can know the Truth about what went down between Senator Longface and Senator Grumpus. Shocking excerpt after the jump.

For his vice presidential running mate, Kerry wanted to select a Republican, and not just any Republican, but John McCain, the man whom Rove had slandered in the 2000 primary season in order to win the nomination for Bush.

To get McCain to join the ticket, Kerry began an all-out behind-the-scenes campaign to convince him it was in the best interests of the country for him to run as his vice president. Kerry approached McCain on more than one occasion and asked him, without making the offer directly, what McCain would do if Kerry were to ask him officially to consider being his running mate. McCain's answer was always the same. He was not interested in going on the ticket with Kerry. At one point Kerry even offered to create a hybrid position of vice president and secretary of state as a way to make the position more powerful, and potentially more appealing. But the answer was still no. According to a source, Kerry went so far as to telephone Cindy McCain to see if she would lobby her husband.

But Cindy McCain said no and Kerry called her a cunt, and that was pretty much the end of that.

 KARL'S "SHADOW" [New York Post]

 Machiavelli's Shadow: The Rise and Fall of Karl Rove [Amazon.com]