BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

It is time for President Obama to bring in the Administration’s version of Mariano Rivera.

They need a closer. And that closer is Joe Biden.

Mr. Obama’s approval ratings have fallen to 37%, chiefly because he refuses to negotiate with Republicans. The House Speaker has basically begged the President to do what every other President in American history has done: negotiate.

But the President and his chief ally on the Hill, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, either won’t negotiate or can’t negotiate.

The White House is so convinced that they have the winning strategy that they even put out a meaningless veto threat on the Republican bill to name a so-called “negotiating committee” on legislation that will never reach the Senate floor.

Both the President and Senator Reid want to crush Republican resistance, and clear the way to a smooth final three years of his tumultuous tenure in the White House.

But that is a risky strategy for the President and for the American people. Obama is putting too much trust in Reid to find a way out of this mess.

But Reid is incapable of cutting a deal. He has a terrible relationship with Mitch McConnell. And he is at war with John Boehner.

Reid’s chief of staff took the unprecedented step of releasing private emails between him and Boehner’s Chief.

That’s kind of like secretly taping private phone calls and then leaking them to a reporter.

Joe Biden would never do that.

He is old-school and he knows how to cut a deal.

And he also knows that refusing to negotiate is not only terrible politics, but bad for the country.

Harry Reid wants to keep Biden out of the picture. He has told the President, in no uncertain terms, that he has it covered.

But he doesn’t have it covered. He is blowing it for the President and for the Democrats.

And he isn’t the only one.

It seems that this Administration is going out of its way to make it harder on themselves. They ordered the World War II memorial closed to a bunch of veterans, but then opened the Mall to an immigration reform rally.

They decided that they couldn’t pay the death benefits of soldiers who had died fighting for America.

They kicked a family –- one 80 year old man and one 79 year woman — out of their home because it was located on public lands.

In these particular instances, the Administration has shouldered the blame, although let’s not kid ourselves. There is plenty of blame to go around.

In any event, the President might think he is “winning”, as a White House staffer said last week, but he isn’t winning. Neither are Republicans. Nor are the American people.

There seems to be only one solution. Send in Joe Biden, the Mariano Rivera of the Obama Administration. He is the only closer the White House has.

Editor’s Note: John Feehery worked for former House Speaker Dennis Hastert and other Republicans in Congress. Feehery is president of Quinn Gillespie Communications. He is a contributor to The Hill’s Pundits Blog and blogs at thefeeherytheory.com.