AHC: A Bearded POTUS after 1950

That is a cultural thing. The West has a long history of untrustworthy beards. OTOH the occident has a long, long, long history of glorifying beards.

As usual it is probably a wealth thing. Before safely razors you needed to be rich to be clean shaven. Clean shaven = wealth = status.
 
I mean, there's a lot of bearded heroes and clean-shaven villains, too.

Tony Stark? Beard. Thanos? No beard. Obi-Wan? Beard. The Emperor? No beard. The Dude? Beard.
 
Hasn't clean-shaven been the norm for most of American history?

Iirc the Founding Fathers were clean-shaven, as were the first fifteen presidents. with the partial exception of Martin Van Buren, who had side whiskers. There was a fashion for beards around the Civil War period, with Lincoln, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, and Harrison having them while Chester Arthur had side-whiskers. Since then all Presidents have been clean-shaven, though Charles Evans Hughes came within a whisker:) of making an exception. It may be significant, though, that Hughes came close only in Electoral votes, being half a million behind in popular ones. No bearded POTUS has won the popular vote since Garfield.

Incidentally, a similar pattern holds among Presidents of the Church. Joseph Smith was clean shaven as was Brigham Young until at least 1855. The next six Prophets were bearded, but the last of these, George Albert Smith, was born in 1870. All Presidents since David O McKay (b1873) have been clean shaven.

Not so. Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, and William Howard Taft all had mustaches. The winner on a national ticket not to be clean-shaven was Charles Curtis, Hoover's VP (1929-1933), and as noted above, Thomas Dewey was the last national candidate not to be clean-shaven.
 
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