Chris Churchill
It’s time for America to bring back bearded presidents.
Santa Claus would be an outstanding president. He is kindly and joyful, of course, but also a masterful organizer who oversees a comtoy-making plex and delivery bureaucracy. Santa is decisive, with an eye for untapped talent. (See: Rudolph.) He is a born leader.
Best of all, he is not on Twitter.
But barring a shocking change to his appearance, Santa could never be elected president. His beard disqualifies him.
If you’re like me, you will be horrified to learn it has been 105 years since we’ve had a president with real hair on his face. In all those years, not a beard or mustache. No goatees or muttonchops. Not even a lonely little presidential soul patch.
Scan the official portraits and you see nothing but bare faces until you find William Howard Taft, who sported a wonderfully bushy mustache that erupted from under his
nose to cover a good portion of his plump cheeks.
There can be only one explanation for the dearth of presidential whiskers, and it reveals a darkness within the American soul. We’re talking bigotry, pure and simple, an irrational distrust of the men who refuse to scrape their faces clean each morning — a senseless ritual, if ever there was one.
I’m ashamed to admit that as recently as a month ago, I was blind to the outrageousness of this prejudice. But during the sunless days of December, I have undergone a remarkable transformation as, hour by hour, a fine carpet gradually covered my face and neck.
Yes, I am now among the bearded, and I say it proudly. I’m compelled to speak out for my new community. Don’t forswear the hair!
We have not always been so biased against the whiskered. Until the 20th century, presidential facial hair was common among our presidents. The latter half of the 1800s, especially, was the golden age of presidential face fur. Look no further than Honest Abe, who arrived in the White House with an Amish look — bearded, but with an exposed upper lip. After Andrew Johnson came the fully bearded Ulysses Grant, followed by Rutherford Hayes and James Garfield, men who easily had the longest plumes among our presidents.
With brush that stretched over their shirt collars, Hayes and Garfield didn’t go full Santa, but dress them in red suits and they could convincingly
ho-ho-ho at children in your local mall.
Presidential facial plumage went downhill from there, largely because our own Chester Arthur, buried at Albany Rural, decided on a hideous muttonchop-mustache combo that defies explanation.
Why Chester? Why? Still, presidential beards and moustaches grew on for a few more decades, ending, as we’ve discussed, with Taft. In the years since, we haven’t even had a nominee with whiskers since New York’s Thomas Dewey, who allowed a little sprig to darken his upper lip.
Did that mustache cost Dewey his famously close election against Harry Truman?
Of course it did.
Truman must have known it, because he immediately mocked Dewey by growing facial hair of his own right after the election. Truman’s goatee was pitifully sparse, though, and he soon gave it up.
The White House has been a whiskerless warren ever since. The presidency might as well be sponsored by Gillette. While the current occupant sports a daring mane atop his head, his bare face is sadly conventional.
I come to you arguing for a new course. It is time to embrace the hairiest among us. Voters of America, dump your narrow-minded bias against the bearded. End the razor’s tyranny!
I know what some of you are thinking: We’re with you Chris and we love your beard. There’s no reason someone with such a glorious face pelt should be excluded from the nation’s highest office. Yet the coming tide of female presidents is going to render this entire discussion moot.
I hear you, truly and sincerely. The first woman president will usher in a brighter future, if not a hairier one, and it can’t come soon enough.
But assuming we will elect at least a few more men, there is no sense in rejecting the bearded among them. Imagine what we would be without Abraham Lincoln and Henry David Thoreau, without Teddy Roosevelt and Grizzly Adams, without ZZ Top and James Harden.
Such great men don’t have time to shave. They refuse to be shamed by chin follicles. They don’t let the world scrape their faces bare. Neither does Santa. If he wants to be president, his beautiful beard shouldn’t get in the way.