Reagan, McCain, Rice, Powell make cameos in new Biden ad on bipartisanship

President Biden’s reelection campaign released a new ad Thursday that focused on bipartisanship and featured photos of Biden with former President Reagan, former Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) as well as Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, former secretaries of State.

The ad, titled “The Way,” was released ahead of the president’s speech on democracy Thursday in Arizona, during which he will honor McCain. It was also dropped as the government appears headed for a weekend shutdown that the White House is seeking to blame on House Republicans, who have been unable to agree to a plan to fund the government despite a bipartisan deal made this summer.

The ad will run on national cable channels and broadcast television including the evening news hour in battleground states Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. 

The one-minute spot opens with images of Biden sitting with Reagan and McCain, as well as Rice and Powell, both of whom worked under former President George W. Bush.

“For Joe Biden, compromise isn’t a way of the past, it’s how he’s building American’s future, passing hundreds of bipartisan laws,” the narrator says in the ad, noting bipartisan laws on infrastructure, semiconductor manufacturing, gun safety and veterans’ health care that Biden has signed.

The ad is part of team Biden-Harris’s 16-week, $25 million advertising campaign focused on battleground states and investments in Hispanic and African American media.

“President Biden has shown that we can get big things done when we put aside our differences for the American people, and he’s running to finish the job and to continue being a president for all Americans,” Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz said in a statement.