As GOP-led Congress and White House brace for battle, some see Joe Biden as the last hope

It was the day before New Year’s Eve two years ago, and Mitch McConnell was suddenly in search of, as he put it, someone to dance with.

Talks had collapsed between McConnell, the Republican Senate minority leader, and his Democratic colleagues over a deal to ward off major tax increases and automatic spending cuts that threatened to send the nation’s economy off what officials apocalyptically described as a “fiscal cliff.” With the clock ticking, the staid Kentuckian and consummate behind-the-scenes legislator known for rarely showing his cards in public went to the Senate floor and made an unusually vivid appeal. “I am willing to get this done, but I need a dance partner,” McConnell declared.

A few hours later, he found one in Vice President Joe Biden, a Democrat with whom he’d sparred for nearly three decades. They were fierce political rivals who were polar opposites on every front, save one: Biden, like McConnell, was a creature of the Senate. He’d represented Delaware for nearly 36 years before relocating down Pennsylvania Avenue as Barack Obama’s No. 2, and, like his GOP colleague, he appreciated the fine art of dealmaking.

In the first of what would be more than a dozen phone conversations between the two over the next 24 hours, McConnell asked Biden, according to a GOP aide, “Does anyone down there know how to make a deal?” Biden, according to a Democrat familiar with the talks, coyly replied, “I think I might know someone.”

The back and forth produced an agreement that averted the crisis — though one that neither party was entirely thrilled with. Both McConnell and Biden were accused by their ranks of giving up too much. Still, it was a rare example of compromise in bitterly divided Washington, where partisan rancor between Obama and Republicans in Congress has left the city largely paralyzed.

But with the GOP set to take over the Senate next year, giving the party control of both chambers of Congress, Obama and congressional Republicans have pledged anew in recent days to find common ground. Central to those efforts could be Biden, a gregarious lawmaker who enjoys the often tedious, incremental game of legislating in a way that many politicians — his boss included — do not. He could emerge as an important bridge between Obama and GOP leaders like McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner, with whom the president’s relationships have been perennially strained.

“This is a situation where someone like Biden thrives,” said Ted Kaufman, a former Delaware senator and longtime friend and adviser to the vice president. “Legislating, figuring out how you can agree with someone without compromising your principles… It’s like playing three-dimensional chess. There are so many moving parts, and Biden loves it and is good at it. And he has good relationships with everybody involved, the president, McConnell and Boehner.”

The biggest unknown is whether Obama will use him — and if he does, how. While Biden has been central to the handful of deals the White House has been able to strike with Republicans in Congress — including the fiscal cliff and raising the debt ceiling — some close to the vice president, both Democrats and Republicans, suggest he hasn’t been used enough.

But others in the White House have questioned whether Biden is a help or a hindrance. He has long had a complicated relationship with Obama aides, who have sometimes been exasperated with the vice president’s love of the spotlight and tendency to go off message. In the aftermath of the fiscal-cliff talks, Senate Democrats, including Majority Leader Harry Reid, were furious that Biden — as one Democratic aide put it — “swooped in” and worked with GOP leadership who, in the Democrats' view, have made it their job to be “completely obstructionist” to Obama’s agenda. It’s unclear exactly what Obama thinks, but Biden has been largely sidelined as the budget and government-shutdown fights have dragged on over the past year.

Already, reports suggest that the VP’s role with the new Congress has gotten off to a bumpy start. During a Nov. 7 lunch at the White House with Obama and congressional leaders from both parties, the president “angrily cut Biden off” when the vice president asked Boehner how long congressional Republicans would need to pass an immigration bill, an unnamed House GOP aide told the Associated Press. Another told Reuters that Obama was “visibly irritated” with the vice president.

Biden’s questioning ran counter to Obama’s position that he is tired of waiting for Republicans to vote on a bill and might use an executive order to act on the issue as early as this week. Biden’s office declined to comment, but a Democratic source disputed the reports, saying Obama was not angry or upset but “firm” in stating his position.

In a subsequent interview with Bloomberg’s Al Hunt, Denis McDonough, Obama’s chief of staff, dodged the question when asked if Biden would play a “more active” role in the Senate, saying only that the vice president is regarded as a “huge asset” at the White House.

The question over what Biden’s role might be comes at an interesting juncture for Obama and Republicans — who, as bitterly divided as they are, need each other. House and Senate Republicans, eager to show they can get things done, will feel pressure to cut deals with the president, who still has veto power over their legislation. Meanwhile, Obama, with just two years left in office, has an eye on his legacy, including preventing Republicans from gutting his key policy achievement: the 2010 Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

The vice president could be central to both of those efforts. It comes at a crucial moment for Biden, as he begins to consider his own political future. The vice president, who turns 72 on Nov. 20, is weighing a run for the presidency in 2016. While Biden, according to those close to him, would relish the idea of being a dealmaker for Obama, there are pluses and minuses to being cast in such a high-profile role. On one hand, Biden’s reputation would benefit if real bipartisan progress is made in Washington. But it might not help with members of his own party to be seen as working with Republicans — much less McConnell, who has been cast as a GOP bogeyman among Democrats.

And it’s the relationship between Biden and McConnell that is likely to be at the center of any White House deals with Republicans on the Hill. Those close to both men use the same terms to describe their relationship: Biden and McConnell are friendly, but not actually friends. “I don’t think they agree on one thing, except that they both love the Senate,” Kaufman said. “They have a relationship that is based more on experience and knowledge and mutual respect and, more than anything, trust. McConnell may not agree with him, but he knows he can trust him — and Biden believes that about McConnell.”

In 2011, Biden spoke on bipartisanship at the University of Louisville’s McConnell Center, named after the GOP senator, where he praised McConnell’s negotiating skills and observed that he’s never overpromised more than he knew his caucus was willing to deliver. “He has never once been wrong in what he’s told me,” Biden declared.

But the first challenge will be getting to the point where Biden and McConnell can actually sit down and try to make a deal. So far, Biden has been most successful in moments of crisis and brinkmanship, like the fiscal cliff. He has been less tested in negotiating other thorny pieces of legislation, like immigration or tax reform.

The trick, said Bruce Reed, a Democratic strategist who was Biden’s chief of staff from 2011 to 2013, is getting negotiations close enough that the vice president can come in and make a difference. If that happens, Reed said, “Joe Biden is the Mariano Rivera of legislative dealmakers, a Hall of Fame closer."

Republicans, for their part, have made clear they view Biden as someone they are willing to deal with — as long as the White House will allow him to engage. “Everybody likes Joe,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina who is personally close to the vice president, said through a spokesperson. Obama, he added, needs to “let Joe Biden out of the house.”