In a razor-close race, Republican nominee for president Donald Trump believes JD Vance has what it takes to win.
Vance would also bring something a bit unusual to the White House: a beard. Whiskers. Facial hair.
According to the Wall Street Journal — yes, there's actually an article about this — the last person to sport presidential stubble was Harry Truman, though nobody seems to have gotten a picture. The last full beard belonged to Benjamin Harrison.
It's been so long since we've seen facial hair in the White House that last week Fox News asked Donald Trump if it might be a VP deal killer.
“No, I've never heard that one,” Trump responded on "The Brian Kilmeade Show." “He looks like a young Abraham Lincoln.”
Like Vance, young Lincoln didn't initially have a beard until a girl wrote to tell him he looked ugly without one. Today, it's hard to imagine Honest Abe without it.
Researcher Sarah Mittal studies beards in the sales and service industry. She says facial hair signals a man is more masculine, smarter and stronger.
“People are using the beard as essentially a shortcut cue to assume that you must be a bit more experienced and a bit more trustworthy,” said Mittal, who is the director of the U.S. Behavioral Science Center at Ipsos North America.
The last VP to wear whiskers in the White House was Charles Curtis from 1929 to 1933; since then, they've all been clean-shaven. Even Al Gore waited until he left office.
But wherever you look these days, facial hair is making a comeback.
And come no-shave November, the election could be decided by a whisker.
