KERRY’S ROLE IS TO MAKE HILLARY LOOK GOOD IN RETROSPECT. DESPITE ALL HER DEBACLES, HE’S TRYING HARD: McCain blasts Kerry’s ‘trifecta’ of disasters on foreign policy.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Tuesday accused Secretary of State John Kerry of presiding over a “trifecta” of foreign policy disasters.

McCain lambasted his former Senate colleague at a hearing in which Kerry faced wide-ranging criticism about the administration’s handling of crises in the Middle East and Ukraine.

“I think you’re about to hit the trifecta,” McCain declared.

“Geneva II [a Syrian peace meeting] was a total collapse, as I predicted to you that it would be. … The Israeli-Palestinian talks, even though you may drag them out for a while, are finished,” McCain said. “And I predict to you that, even though we gave the Iranians the right to enrich, which is unbelievable, that those talks will collapse too.” . . .

The tough talk from McCain, a fellow Vietnam War veteran whom Kerry considered asking to be his vice presidential running mate, underscored the difficulties the former senator and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate is now enduring.

Since taking office last year, he has dived into a series of challenges with the attitude of someone who knows he is in his last job, racking up frequent flier miles shuttling between the Middle East and Europe to convince the Israelis and Palestinians to start talking; stop Russia from a further invasion of Ukraine; resume nuclear talks with Iran; and try to get Syria to give up its chemical weapons as agreed.

Republicans are skeptical that Kerry is making progress on any of those issues, and there have been whispers that in his pursuit of an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, he has his eye on a Nobel Prize.

Kerry is also taking friendly fire from Democrats. With the Middle East talks teetering on collapse last week, administration officials anonymously sniped at him to the press.

Well, it’s never too early to start the battlespace prep for a scapegoating operation. But to be fair to Kerry, while his talents are modest, the real problem is that no one abroad respects, or fears, his boss.