A cabinet candidate in the making?

Amidst the Emerson furor (and who thought the outcry among Cons would be even louder than that among Libs?), another former Liberal cabinet minister sounded like he was giving a belated audition for a role on Harper's team:

"We need to invest a great deal in the effort to re-establish the proximity of our relationship with the United States," Manley said at a Toronto forum on security issues.

Manley said he has long believed that a prime minister's biggest responsibility, outside of national unity, is managing Canada's relationship with the United States, its largest and most significant trading partner...

"Whether it's now Prime Minister Stephen Harper or whether it has been other prime ministers in the past, we need to cut the prime minister a bit of slack," Manley said.

Manley called on Canadians to support Harper in efforts to improve border security without harming trade between the two countries, which became heavily scrutinized after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Which by my count makes two recently-mooted Liberal leadership contenders going out of their way to make life easier for Harper. And here I thought the Libs generally had already done pretty much everything they could to hand as much power as possible to the Cons.