Also keep in mind why we use watercooling...
The ability of water to 'pick up' heat is much greater than air due to its thermal capacity. As such the water circulating through the pump will always be more efficient at pickup up heat than the air trying to cool the pump from the outside. Its the very reason we use water cooling instead of huge ornate heatsinks with huge fans on them- efficiency.
While you will certainly be able to cool the pump via air cooling the heat that currently goes into the loop will largely remain the same.
Now if you really wanted to try it I would suggest a submerged pump with a secondary cooling loop. It would indeed both remove more heat from the pump as well as extending the life up the pump by avoiding eventual thermal breakdown. The down side being the benefits from such a setup would be minimal at best.
Now if a person was using a huge pump and wanted to stay beneath the effective 50watt pump threshhold that Cathar suggests then watercooling of the pump may just allow use of larger pumps without negative effects.
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