Just when I thought I couldn’t like Obama more, the ultimate pot sweetener.

Kerry aides insist he’s not angling for the job and point to his long involvement in foreign affairs. It started with his famous testimony as a 27-year-old veteran questioning the Vietnam War before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It continues today, at age 64, as the No. 3 Democrat on the same panel.

But envisioning him in the post would hardly be a stretch given Obama’s chances at securing the Democratic nomination, a general election shaping up as a “change” campaign and Kerry’s relationship with the Illinois senator.

Kerry would likely face competition from Sen. Joseph R. Biden of Delaware, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee; Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, a former Peace Corps volunteer who also sits on the panel, and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, a top Obama adviser.

In a strange way I’d find it reassuring to have Waffles lead the delegation to Tehran, and not just because of the comic potential of him posing for photos with a guy he once claimed he wanted to push off a cliff. Thanks to his infamous “global test” for U.S. military action, his preoccupation with the moral high ground he believes we’ve somehow lost to, ahem, Iran, and his willingness to undermine American foreign policy by hobnobbing with assorted enemies (an old habit), he’s become the exemplar of the sort of groveling, negotiation-from-weakness posture that conservatives fear Obama will take. If that’s what Obama’s planning, he might as well name Kerry and own it.

An interesting subplot here: Because of Kennedy’s illness, if Kerry’s appointed it could conceivably lead to both senate seats in Massachusetts being vacant, a remarkable coincidence considering that they only seem to be earnestly contested once every 30 or 40 years. Exit question: Do we stand a chance at picking one up or are they just going to plug Caroline and Patches in there and ride that out until 2040 or so? I’m guessing the latter; as it is, we can’t even get on the ballot.