President Obama will nominate Sen. John Kerry to be the next secretary of state at the White House later today, the Washington Post reports.

Kerry selection “all but guarantees a swift, smooth path to confirmation. The lawmaker has been a frequent foreign policy adviser and confidant to Obama, and his long experience means he has bipartisan advocates in the Senate.”

A new CNN/ORC poll finds that most Americans think Kerry’s appointment would be good for the nation, with 57% saying they hold that view and 32% saying it would be bad. But there is also a partisan gap, as 80% of Democrats and 54% of independents say the Kerry pick would be good but 56% of Republicans say it would be bad.

Meanwhile, the New York Times notes that if he is confirmed, Kerry will become the first losing general election candidate to ascend a major new political position since Richard Nixon in 1968.

A new Gallup poll shows President Obama’s approval rating at 56%, his highest mark on that question since October 2009, with just 37% disapproving of his job performance.

“The timing of the increase in Obama’s ratings could reflect a broad-based public reaction to the Newtown shootings, similar to the ‘rally around the flag’ effect often seen at the start of wars and other threats to national security, in which Americans rally behind their leader. It could also reflect the impact of the president’s specific actions after the tragedy, including his attendance and speech at a Newtown prayer service Sunday night, and his appointment on Wednesday of a national task force to recommend steps that can be taken to reduce gun violence in the future.”

Arizona Republican Party chairman Tom Morrissey insists he’s not a “birther” but still says he does not believe the President Obama’s birth certificate is authentic, the Phoenix New Times reports.

Said Morrissey: “In my opinion, what I have seen from the president, produced as a birth certificate, does not convince me that it is a real document.”

Bloomberg: “In the Obama-Boehner relationship, there’s been a golf summit (they played as a team), a birthday gift of Tuscan red wine (Obama’s to Boehner), congratulatory post-election telephone calls (Boehner to Obama) and sporadic one-on-one meetings at the White House.”

“Still, at a personal level, where trust resides, they remain largely strangers. The two men who hold the keys to delivering a deficit-reduction compromise to avert more than $600 billion in tax and spending increases in January are more familiar with each other as partisan foils than policy-making partners, according to people close to both who declined to be named because they aren’t authorized to speak publicly about the interactions between the two leaders.”