Upon hearing Monday’s news that Donald Trump had selected Sen. J.D. Vance as his 2024 running mate, commentators and history buffs were quick to notice that the veep choice breaks the longstanding “beard barrier” on American presidential tickets.
Axios reports that Vance would be the first vice president with facial hair since President Herbert Hoover’s running mate Charles Curtis donned the mustache in 1933. Others noted Vance would be the first candidate on a presidential ticket with a full beard since Benjamin Harrison in 1892, although the 1916 Republican presidential nominee Charles Evans Hughes’ facial hair could arguably fall within the “full beard” range. Either way, that’s more than 100 years of clean-shaven statesmen, and women everywhere are rejoicing that the drought of dapperness is over.
While you may occasionally hear women demurring about the facial hair of their significant others, it’s objectively true that a good and well-kept — not patchy, adolescent, or overgrown — beard can transform and elevate a man’s attractiveness, and even his political prospects.
Consider the baby-faced Sen. Ted Cruz in 2016, who was a near-perfect GOP nominee on paper, but not in the mirror (he was often compared to a “blobfish” by internet goblins). After his primary loss to Trump, and his narrow victory over Beto O’Rourke in 2018, Cruz came back from a Thanksgiving recess with “a filled-out salt-and-pepper beard, giving his face a defined jawline and its first-ever hints of ruggedness and affability,” and the senator hasn’t looked back since. I can’t help but wonder how that 2016 primary would have worked out for him had the beard been in place.
Vance’s facial hair tells us he understands, much like Trump, that appearances are often more important than policy positions and that without a beard, the 39-year-old would look like a very tall baby, far too inexperienced to lead. Indeed, if elected, Vance would be the third-youngest vice president to serve.
That’s why when even the clean-shaven Trump (who once told his own son he needed to shave his Covid beard) was pressed recently on whether Vance’s beard would be an obstacle in his VP selection, the former president admitted, “He looks good. Looks like a young Abraham Lincoln.”
Breaking the “beard barrier” is not just a step forward for the entire GOP up and down the ticket this fall, but several steps forward for women everywhere who face routine disappointment when they find their husbands have once again decided to shave. Next time he complains about the itchiness or annoyance of the upkeep, point him to the story of a plump baby-faced memoirist who grew a beard and became the next vice president of the United States.
