The Effects of Earlier Motion Pictures on Politics?

hey, all. this is something i've been batting around for a while.

some of you may know that Abraham Lincoln didn't always have a beard. story goes that he grew out his beard during his presidential campaign because another politician recommended it to improve his image: Americans (of that time, at least) just like beards, it makes people look more confident or something like that. *strokes his goatee* others will recall that a major reason Nixon lost one of his debates (against JFK, iirc) was because he happened to be sick at the time and just looked terrible, and it was televised so many more people saw it than they would earlier in history

anyway, with the potential of my ASB ATL to include photography becoming more advanced (leading to motion pictures as early as the 1860s), one thing occurred to me that could be a secondary effect of this. if motion pictures, and ultimately television and higher-definition photographs start coming up and being commonplace as early as the the turn of the 20th century, it could very well affect politics all over the world (not just in the US) if some politicians just don't visually appeal to the populace even when they did IOTL.

what does everyone else think of this idea?
 
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