When midterm voters think of JOE BIDEN at the polls this November, the Republican party wants them to remember one specific image from one specific video clip. It’s of a dejected Biden giving off the impression of being overwhelmed by the job. His hands are clasped. His head is bowed, his chin leaning on the fists in front of him. There is a tinge of pain apparent on his forehead as, eyes apparently closed, he slides behind the two microphones set up in front of him. The moment occurred during a press conference last year when Biden was questioned about the hasty U.S. pullout from Afghanistan. News outlets seized on it at the time for the striking visual it presented. And GOP candidates have been shelling out cash across the country since to make sure that voters don’t forget it. The image has become ubiquitous in Republican campaign ads over the past several months. The Republican Governor’s Association used it in one ad, in which a narrator describes the president as “too weak” to stop international drug traffickers. The National Republican Senatorial Committee layered the image over another noting how high gas prices had gone. A clip or image from the moment has also run in ads by Alabama Senate candidate KATIE BRITT, Ohio Senate hopeful J.D. VANCE, TED BUDD , who’s running for Senate in North Carolina, and Arizona House candidate JUAN CISCOMANI, as well as by various Republican super PACs. Unfortunately, the graphic wasn’t good enough to save some candidates. BETH HARWELL’s campaign put a graphic declaring “BIDEN IS DESTROYING AMERICA” over the image. Pennsylvania Senate candidate DAVE MCCORMICK declared that “weakness and the wokeness is going to take the America I know and make it something radically different,” in a voiceover that played over it. His rival, CARLA SANDS, opened up one of her TV spots with a still image of Biden with his head in his hands to argue that House Speaker NANCY PELOSI and Rep. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ were really calling the shots. Presidencies can be defined by the images they produced: like DONALD TRUMP touching that oddly lit globe or BARACK OBAMA letting the young son of a White House staffer touch his hair. In some cases, those images can become campaign iconography too, like GEORGE W. BUSH staring out from Air Force One above a flooded New Orleans. For Republicans, the Biden image is a cousin of that. JESSE HUNT, communications director for the Republican Governors Association, told West Wing Playbook that they saw the image as a symbol of what they argued is wide-spread Democratic failure. "There are few images that better encapsulate the weakness and incompetence of Joe Biden's presidency,” he said. “He's been completely overwhelmed and ineffective much like the Democratic governors who are running in 2022. That's why it's such a great connection to make in the minds of many voters." Of course, the video itself is more complicated than GOP admakers have made it out to be. In the 2021 exchange, Biden appears to be holding back as he fielded tough questions from Fox News reporter PETER DOOCY over the deaths of a dozen American troops in Afghanistan during the U.S. evacuation. The image in the ads casts Biden as weak and resigned. The actual moment came as Biden pushed back on Doocy’s line of questioning over whether he or Trump bore responsibility for the American deaths. Peculiarly, while the Biden clip is ubiquitous in GOP television ads, Republicans haven’t been deploying it as widely online. KYLE THARP, the author of the excellent For What It’s Worth newsletter, which tracks digital campaign spending, said that he was familiar with the clip and image, and that it had appeared in some digital ads he has come across. But he said the moment did not appear much in digital ads this cycle, which he attributed to both the current underinvestment by Republicans in online ads (Democrats, he noted, have been massively outspending their Republican rivals online), as well as the heavy focus by GOP candidates on their Democratic opponents in the race, rather than the president himself. “The president just hasn't factored into a lot of Republican ads online recently,” Tharp told West Wing Playbook. MESSAGE US — Are you IAN MELLUL, associate director of presidential advance and director of production for presidential events? Email us at westwingtips@politico.com and we may publish your comments.
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