The return of 'Top Gun: Joe'

Aviator Joe is back — just in time to take his quasi-victory lap.

Forget the glowing eyes of Dark Brandon. As President Joe Biden arrived back in Washington to sign the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, it was his Ray-Ban 3025s — the dark, wire-rimmed, teardrop-shaped sunglasses he has made his signature — that once again seemed the emblem of the man.

Although the aviators and the big-grin, public-service-is-cool persona they represent never exactly went away, they had receded into the background, relegated mostly to bike rides and similar low-eyeball appearances as the president wrestled with COVID-19 (policy, variants, his own case), the war in Ukraine, inflation and other grim issues. At the Group of 7 outdoors family photo in June, he went tieless (like everyone else) and aviator-less. At the White House Easter Egg Roll, the first since the pandemic, the glasses were similarly gone.

But ever since Biden emerged from his COVID-19 isolation into the sunshine earlier this month, the aviators have been front and center — as he proclaimed his negative status in a Rose Garden speech, on his trip with the first lady to eastern Kentucky to survey flood damage, during his vacation in South Carolina. Symbolic, once again, of a president who, as John Harwood wrote for CNN, "suddenly looks different."

It's the attitude as much as anything (even taking into account the glare of summer). He's not just wearing sunglasses now. He's wearing shades.

"You know Joe Biden is having a good day when he wears his aviators," said Lis Smith, author of the recent book "Any Given Tuesday" and the political strategist who helped craft Pete Buttigieg's presidential campaign. See, for example, Biden's appearance last April when he, Vice President Kamala Harris and Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson appeared on the South Lawn after Jackson's Senate confirmation as an associate justice of the Supreme Court.

"You know he's having a good month when you see him day after day wearing his aviators," Smith added. "It's a sign he's on a roll right now."

Biden even used his as a stand-in to herald his first Instagram post in 2014, which featured not his face but his Ray-Bans tossed on his desk. When he played himself (as vice president) in a "Veep"-inspired White House Correspondents' Association dinner sketch that same year, he did so with his Ray-Bans, a leather jacket and his Corvette — but the glasses took center stage.

Since Biden took office, the glasses have become part of his diplomatic gift set, presented to such political peers as Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan, President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea (both during Biden's Asia trip in May), Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada (during the Three Amigos North American Summit in November) and President Vladimir Putin of Russia (after a meeting in Geneva in 2021).

More recently, another pair of Ray-Bans helped power "Top Gun: Maverick" to the top of the box office, defied conventional wisdom that said COVID-19 and streaming had buried the summer blockbuster, and played an integral part in a story featuring an aging but even more effective hero. Someone all the better for all his experience. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

They represent, "I'm a cool guy, but I'm a responsible person, and I'm going to wave the American flag and save you," said Tammy Haddad, a consultant on "Veep" and founder and CEO of Haddad Media. It's a familiar, comfortable semiology, which harks back to the myths of the Silent Generation, and the promise of Biden.

"People loved seeing Cruise in his aviators again, and responded," Haddad said. "The president is following the same path hoping for the same results."

That may seem reductive and superficial, but it's also part of how we interpret the world. We have been bathed in the increasing osmosis among Hollywood, social media and politics for the past six years, going back to the reality TV of the Trump administration and culminating in the dramatic arc of the recent Jan. 6 congressional hearings, produced by James Goldston, former president of ABC News.

After two months of seeing Cruise's giant grin under his Ray-Bans in ads and posters, and being inundated with headlines and tweets proclaiming his superpowers, there's an almost Pavlovian reaction to seeing the same glasses on Biden. Such images push our subliminal buttons and play on associations, whether we are aware of it or not. It's basic human psychology.

It's not, Smith said, that they are a "prop," but that they are a genuine expression of a certain archetype. "It's vintage Joe Biden," she said.

Besides, what better way for anyone to suggest that they are flying high?