Comedian Stephen Colbert insisted on Sunday that his ambition to run for president was no joke -- then joked he would consider disgraced Republican Sen. Larry Craig as a vice presidential running mate.

"I don't want to be president. I want to run for president. There's a difference," the host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report said in a television interview.

"I'm far realer than Sam Brownback, let me put it that way," he told NBC's Meet the Press in a reference to Republican Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, who dropped out of the 2008 White House race on Friday.