When J.D. Vance took to the stage of the Republican convention Wednesday night to officially accept the vice-presidential nomination, he did so in a dark blue suit and an ocean blue tie — a “boy from Middletown, Ohio,” as his wife, Usha, said in her introduction, who had become “a powerful example of the American dream.” Not to mention the first millennial on a major party ticket.
He looked the part, except for one thing. One unmistakable detail that — in the style of his running mate, Donald J. Trump — not only upended modern political wisdom, but broke a longstanding political taboo.
His beard.
The last bearded man elected president of the United States was Benjamin Harrison, in 1888. The last president with any facial hair whatsoever was William Howard Taft, elected in 1908. The last vice president with a mustache was Charles Curtis, who was Herbert Hoover’s veep. And the last major party candidate to try to break that clean-shaven streak was Thomas E. Dewey, who had a dapper little caterpillar on his upper lip and ran, unsuccessfully, for the highest office in 1944 and 1948.
His campaign set a bad precedent. According to the National Archives blog “Pieces of History,” Mr. Hoover once said of Mr. Dewey’s ’stache, “A man couldn’t wear a mustache like that without having it affect his mind.”
Ever since, a clean-shaven face has defined the status quo in the corridors of power of Washington and Wall Street. At least until now.
The Problem With Beards
Facial hair is often seen as suspicious. Facial hair hides something — maybe something even more telling than a weak chin. It suggests subterfuge. Neatly trimmed, it has been associated with the demon Mephistopheles, who was often pictured with a goatee, and Dracula. When left unchecked, it recalls rebels like Fidel Castro, and hippies.
“Shaved faces were a mark of urbanity and good grooming,” said Richard T. Ford, a professor at Stanford Law School and the author of “Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History.” “Beards became associated with rural lifestyles (‘mountain men’), old men, college professors and the counterculture. None of those associations were likely to appeal to a mass electorate.
“The counterculture vibe was especially problematic,” he continued, “but the other associations suggested either a lack of good breeding or a dubious eccentricity.”
It didn’t help that politicians who lost their races and appeared to be experiencing something of a long, dark night of the soul sometimes expressed their crises by disappearing — and then reappearing with beards.
Al Gore did it in 2001, after the Supreme Court ruled that George W. Bush had won the presidency. Paul Ryan did it in 2015, when he announced he would not seek the presidential nomination. Ted Cruz did it in 2016, after the end of his run for president. Beto O’Rourke did it in 2019, after his try for the highest office. Even Mitt Romney, though still in office, seemed to display his alienation from his party by getting, literally, bristly, in 2022.
As David Letterman told The New York Times of why he grew his own enormous beard after leaving “Late Night,” “The beard is a good reminder to me that that was a different life.” It can be either a badge of failure or one of renunciation.
“It’s also a way of rebranding,” Mr. Ford said. “I’m back, but I’m not the person you remember.”
This all speaks to why Mr. Trump himself is famously anti-beard, telling his son Donald Jr. on his podcast, “Triggered,” that he preferred him without the facial hair. Perhaps to suggest he really is his own man, Don Jr. has kept his beard, which he first grew during a hunting and fishing trip in 2018.
As he wrote on Instagram: “I brought back some scruff as a souvenir. Maybe I should keep it??? LMK your thoughts. #scruff #beard #mountainman.” Photos suggested that by Christmas he had shaved, but the beard reappeared in early 2019 and has been his trademark ever since.
Coincidentally, that appears to be about the same time Mr. Vance grew his beard, though the precise moment is harder to pinpoint. When Mr. Vance was on the promotional trail for his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” in 2016 and 2017, he was clean-shaven, but by the time he ran for the Senate in 2022, the facial hair was fully in place. His look, like his politics, had changed.
The Lincoln Beard vs. the Eastwood Beard
Despite Mr. Trump telling Fox Radio that he thought the beard made Mr. Vance look “like a young Abraham Lincoln,” it doesn’t really look much like Lincoln’s beard. That beard came without a mustache and was altogether less groomed, and it was reportedly grown, said Sean Wilentz, a professor of American history at Princeton University, because an 11-year-old girl told Lincoln in 1860 that it would help him get elected by hiding the thin, cadaverous nature of his face.
Mr. Vance’s beard, by contrast, works to give the candidate, who has something of a round baby face, both a jawline and an overall air of he-manship.
And Mr. Vance’s beard, like Donald Trump Jr.’s, is more in the tradition of the spaghetti western beard. It is closer to Clint Eastwood’s “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” beard (which, as it happens, Mr. Trump has celebrated on his Instagram), than the beards of any political forebears.
For Mr. Vance and Mr. Trump, who are known to be friends, their beards suggest not just two men on the same page, but the pioneer West, a land where men were men and men shot bears.
For a long time, that was considered a potential liability in politics. According to research by Rebekah E. Herrick of Oklahoma State University published in the Scholars Strategy Network, voters may “see men with beards and mustaches as less feminist and more supportive of gun rights, military spending and the deployment of force.”
In the MAGA world, however, where gender stereotypes can be a virtue, the N.R.A. is a friend, and qualities like “toughness” and “masculinity” are celebrated, such beard clichés may work in Mr. Vance’s favor. (As, in fact, may his beard’s resemblance to that of Donald Jr.’s, given that the former president is known to be most comfortable working with his own family.)
Whether Mr. Vance’s beard will set a new trend remains to be seen. Lincoln’s certainly did. “By 1863, three members of his cabinet had beards: Edwin Stanton, Gideon Welles and Edward Bates,” Mr. Wilentz said. Thereafter (and with the exception of Andrew Johnson), “six presidents in a row, counting Grover Cleveland just once, were either bearded or heavily hirsute.”
Still, Mr. Wilentz said, despite a flurry of excitement among beard-buds on social media, “it’s going to take a lot for Vance to shift the trend should he get into office.” In fact, Mr. Vance’s sudden promotion to beard role model at a time of great division in the country could have the opposite effect.
Eric Calvo, a 27-year-old communications professional, recently grew a beard that he was pretty happy with until this week, when a friend told him it made him think of Mr. Vance.
“That was the social death knell for me,” Mr. Calvo said. “I shaved it off Tuesday night at 10:30 p.m.”
And given all the history, perhaps Mr. Vance will do the same. “He’ll probably do a poll to see if he stays or shaves,” Mr. Wilentz said.
