Joe Biden Believes in the Good Will of Republicans. Is That Naïve?

Ron Edmonds/Associated Press

Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader and self-described “grim reaper” of liberal legislative dreams, settled into a routine of sorts during Barack Obama’s second term whenever he felt he was cornered by Democrats.

Mr. McConnell would rise from his chair in the Capitol, walk to his scheduler’s desk, smile a tight smile, and ask: “Can we get Joe Biden on the phone?”

That was precisely what happened in late 2012, when Republicans were still in the minority in the Senate, and Mr. McConnell hit an impasse with Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, over the elimination of Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy.

As a New Year’s Eve deadline approached, Mr. Biden and Mr. McConnell hammered out an agreement in a dozen phone calls, aides to both men said, with Mr. Obama signing off on every move. The two sides struck a deal that delivered some, but far from all, of what Mr. Reid wanted. This year, as he runs for president, Mr. Biden cites that deal and others he cut with Mr. McConnell as proof of his skill in achieving bipartisan legislation in an otherwise hyperpartisan environment.

“I’ll work with Mitch McConnell where we can agree,” Mr. Biden said this month — adding that on some issues, like gun control, there was no room for compromise.

That he could agree with Mr. McConnell on anything is a controversial statement for any Democrat to make these days. But in a sprawling field of 20 candidates, Mr. Biden stands out for his enduring belief in the good will of congressional Republicans. He insists that the G.O.P. has been bullied by President Trump but that civility and compromise will return to Washington once Mr. Trump is gone.

It’s a view that has been branded as naïve and wistful by some Democratic rivals as well as by the ascendant left wing of his party. That criticism is particularly pointed with regard to Mr. McConnell, whose decision to block Mr. Obama’s nomination of Merrick B. Garland to the Supreme Court in 2016 elevated him from mere obstructionist to arch-villain in the eyes of many Democrats.

The criticism has only intensified in recent days as Mr. McConnell has rebuffed Democratic calls to quickly move ahead with gun control legislation and lashed out at Democrats for reviving attacks on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

As a result, many in the party say, Mr. Biden’s comfortable relationship with the Senate leader is not only out of date, but dangerous.

“Mitch McConnell over the last decade has basically been on a crusade to destroy the Senate, so this idea that just getting rid of Trump would somehow send us back to some Golden Age in the Senate is ridiculous,” said Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, a rival presidential candidate.

Travis Dove for The New York Times

Mr. Bennet was one of three Democratic senators to vote against the 2012 budget deal, viewing it as an unnecessary capitulation that has emboldened Mr. McConnell.

“You have to have some pretty seriously rose-colored glasses to think that the last six years of the Obama administration showed great promise in terms of deliberation or legislation,” Mr. Bennet said.

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Mr. Biden and Mr. McConnell were not especially close in their nearly 25 years together in the Senate. But interviews with two dozen people close to both men show that their relationship, while not quite an actual friendship, became stronger — and more mutually beneficial — during Mr. Obama’s second term. Their negotiations offered Mr. Biden a more powerful role, and gave Mr. McConnell a congenial bargaining partner and what the Senate leader viewed as the path of least resistance to striking a deal, in the view of Biden critics.

Mr. Biden and his defenders say he is being attacked for refusing to accept what they consider a false premise: that progress is possible only through the use of uncompromising political force.

“How in the hell are you going to get a damned thing done if you don’t talk to the other side?” said former Senator Alan Simpson, Republican of Wyoming, who struck up an across-the-aisle friendship with Mr. Biden in the 1970s.

“I see people saying he can’t be president because he talked to this one or that one,” Mr. Simpson added. “Here’s what I want to tell them: You think you can be a United States senator, and do your job, really do your job, by not talking to the other side? You have to talk to the commies, the kooks, the racists, the Tea Party, you have to talk to everybody.”

Mr. Biden, 76, has said he is bound to Mr. McConnell and other opponents by “civility” and an unbreakable, unwritten code that the Democratic leader Mike Mansfield preached to him early in his career: “It’s always appropriate to question another man’s judgment, but never appropriate to question his motives.”

As senators, Mr. Biden and Mr. McConnell had little interaction. They served briefly together on the Judiciary Committee in the late 1980s, and worked on only one significant piece of legislation together, a 2007 measure seeking to improve human rights in Myanmar.

By 2010, however, Mr. McConnell had reached two conclusions that pushed him toward Mr. Biden, according to a dozen people close to both men, who spoke anonymously to disclose private discussions.

T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times

First, he did not believe he could work with Mr. Reid, a former prizefighter who viewed Mr. McConnell as an obstructionist who needed to be thwarted at all costs. Mr. McConnell, for his part, thought Mr. Reid was not a good-faith negotiator, and suspected Democrats were leaking details of negotiations, two people close to him said.

Then there was Mr. Obama. The two men felt deeply uncomfortable in each other’s presence, according to their aides and their own public statements. In his book, Mr. McConnell admitted he privately called the president “Professor Obama” because he was so prone to lecturing him. Mr. Obama and his aides thought Mr. McConnell was disdainful and taciturn, according to former members of Mr. Obama’s staff.

“From the beginning, it was clear that President Obama wanted Biden to take the lead with McConnell,” said Ted Kaufman, a longtime aide and friend to Mr. Biden. “Biden had a very realistic view of McConnell and knew that they had major differences.”

After being overshadowed during Mr. Obama’s first term, Mr. Biden embraced the opportunity to become a power player.

In 2010, Mr. McConnell and Mr. Biden negotiated a last-minute deal that prevented a government shutdown. A year later, Mr. McConnell hit the Biden speed dial again, this time to avert a potentially catastrophic failure to raise the debt limit precipitated by Tea Party Republicans in the House.

All of that was a dress rehearsal for 2012 and another showdown over the debt limit, the so-called fiscal cliff. Mr. Obama was fresh off a convincing re-election win over Mitt Romney that was propelled, in part, by his promise to scrap tax cuts for families earning more than $250,000, enacted by George W. Bush in 2001.

Mr. Reid staked out a maximalist position, saying he was willing to go over the cliff; Mr. Obama, despite having campaigned on the issue, was worried “that a sudden major tax hike and massive spending cut could together trigger another recession,” Gene Sperling, a top Obama economic aide, said in an interview.

Two days before the deadline, the talks stalled. That’s when Mr. McConnell placed his call to Mr. Biden, who was on Air Force Two. “Get off now!” Mr. McConnell said in a voice mail message, according to former aides to both men.

From there, things went fairly quickly. Mr. McConnell, aides said, was spooked by the election results and eager to cut a deal; Mr. Biden operated within a narrow range of parameters established by Mr. Obama and his economic team, but he also brought his own reassuring presence to the talks.

“When he’d say, ‘Mitch, it’s Joe. You know me. I am telling you there is no way we can go there’ — that kind of thing was always more convincing coming from him,” Mr. Sperling recalled.

Larry Downing /Reuters

At one tense moment, Mr. Biden — hunched over a speakerphone in his office with Mr. Sperling and other staff members — struggled to remember the name of Rohit Kumar, the McConnell adviser crunching the numbers for Republicans.

“Oh, hell, can I just call you Mitch’s guy?” Mr. Biden said, according to a person who was on the call — to laughter.

The deal they struck was a partial victory for Democrats, raising top tax rates for families earning more than $450,000 and extending some unemployment insurance benefits. “I feel very, very good,” Mr. Biden told reporters on New Year’s Day.

Others did not. A handful of progressive Democrats — including Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Tom Harkin of Iowa and Bernie Sanders of Vermont — stormed into Mr. Reid’s office to complain, according to Democratic aides. He told them to vote with their consciences and informed the White House he would back the deal, but would not sell it. The measure passed easily.

During a follow-up meeting in the Oval Office in early 2013, Mr. Obama pressed Mr. McConnell to work on a long-term budget package before the 2014 midterms, when he would be running for re-election in Kentucky, Mr. Reid recalled in a recent phone interview. Mr. McConnell said that was impossible — Republican primary challengers could use it against incumbents.

Mr. Biden responded by saying, “Mitch, we want to see you come back,” Mr. Reid said.

In recent years, Mr. Biden has not been shy about criticizing Mr. McConnell’s actions, especially the decision to block Judge Garland. But he has been loath to denounce him personally — to the annoyance of some of his own staff members, according to a current Biden adviser.

Neither man has much incentive these days to highlight their bonhomie: Mr. McConnell will also be running for office in 2020, seeking a seventh term. His office declined to comment for this story.

But both men spoke affectionately about each other when there was less at stake politically.

In December 2016, Mr. McConnell offered an emotional send-off to Mr. Biden from the well of the Senate, recounting a boyhood battle that echoed his own struggles with polio as a toddler.

“The man we honor today wasn’t always a talker,” he said. “He suffered from a debilitating stutter for most of his childhood. He was teased for it. But he was determined to overcome it. And so he did.”

When Mr. Biden’s son Beau died in 2015, Mr. McConnell was the only Senate Republican to attend his funeral, a gesture that deeply moved Mr. Biden, according to a person close to Mr. McConnell.

In 2011, Mr. Biden, commenting on the large crowd that saw him speak at the University of Louisville’s McConnell Center, peered at his host and said: “You want to see whether or not a Republican and Democrat really like one another. Well, I’m here to tell you we do.”

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