Sometimes Presidential policy is enacted on behalf of an unwilling public. In 1860, American voters elected a clean-shaven President, but by his inauguration in 1861 Abraham Lincoln wore the beard every American school child knows today. Because his adviser Alan Pinkerton caught wind of an assassination attempt on the way to Washington, Lincoln traveled in secrecy and wore a disguise. Contemporary critics argued that the beard was part of this ruse, a cowardly act from a pusillanimous man. These critics had a lot of hard lessons in store for them.
Another abolitionist, John C Fremont, was the first attempt to bring the beard to the White House. But Lincoln’s beard was the Trojan Horse. In the next 70 years only Johnson and McKinley managed to hold office without whiskers, the one having rode on Lincoln’s coat tails and the other shot by anarchists (how they loathe a clean shave). When Lincoln was President there were more important things than shaving in the morning and American men often posed for portraits with fire hazard beards and unwashed hair matted into mysterious shapes. Thereafter the Victorian protocol of a well groomed beard swept the United States as it had England. The beard came to be a symbol of masculine bravery and gravitas. In the executive tradition it meant a good deal more.
Every true-blooded American man has wondered from time to time what it would be like to kiss all of the presidents on the mouth. At that point it becomes imperative that the beard be considered on a more intimate level. Ask any man at a bar to describe Rutherford B Hayes’ beard and they will begin with a description of its coarse fullness and then move on to the faint smell of maple and and the light powder of gold bouillon. Ask him about Cleveland’s mustache and he will say “bushy with a hint of Oneida idealism and Hawaiian imperialism”. He will describe Grant’s beard as reeking of bourbon and gunpowder, damp with the with the spittle of a war-crazed lunatic. Arthur’s whiskers will typically illicit not a verbal response but an expression of complacent euphoria. Van Buren’s sideburns, a seized look of confused panic.
Why do Presidents grow beards? You may well ask why all men grow beards. Was the self conscious Lincoln trying to cover a weak chin? Was Harrison trying to impress the girls that followed his front porch campaign? No. Well, yes, but no.
Presidents grow beards because it is their birthright; 500,000 years ago when the DNA of modern humans diverged from that of Neanderthals we retained the trait of male facial hair. Evolution dictates that this trait serve a function in the strongest of our species, and the strongest of our species become heads of state. Our DNA knows this and respects it. This concept will be apparent to anybody familiar with Chuck Norris and his beard.
By the time the first World War broke out we had the clean-shaven Wilson in office and the shock of global disaster set a chill in the bones of the American electorate. Vice Presidents Thomas Marshall and Charles Curtis wore austere mustaches, but the beard would be gone from the Presidency. This temerity on the part of America was capitalized upon by the agenda of King Camp Gillette, who heavily bankrolled the motion picture industry. Gillette, who felt that he alone was good enough for facial hair, would see that movies depicted only smooth-chinned heroes. This has proved to be a heavy strain on 20th century Presidents, and it isn’t until Nixon and Carter that you began to see tentative sideburns again. After leaving office Lyndon Johnson grew his hair long, but he lacked the moral fortitude for a beard.
As we stand at the dawn of a new century you begin to see a beard here, another there. Gore grew what he called a beard after he “lost” the 2000 election. Tom Coburn and Bill Richardson grew lame duck beards. We are hopeful people. We are hirsute people. It stands on all of us to let the President know in no small terms that now is the time to lay down our razors. Now is the time to wrap our beards around America, to reclaim our dignity with amber waves of grain.
To the President and to his future beard! (Keeping my fingers crossed)
photos: Lincoln, Garfield, and Hayes.
