What's next, Mr. Former Vice President? A ponytail? A red Camaro? An intern?

Washington has always been a town where politicians' midlife crises are uncomfortably played out in public (paging Messrs. Condit, Clinton, Gingrich, et al)--but who expected it from stable old Al Gore?

Yet there it was, staring out from page A14 of Friday's New York Times: Al Gore sporting a new beard. And not just any kind of beard, mind you, but a scraggly, salt-and-pepper, chick-magnet, Ted Kaczynski kind of beard (which, come to think of it, might be appropriate, given how Gore has been a virtual hermit since he finished teaching his "journalism" class at Columbia in May).

But before you all start demanding pinup posters of the "new" Gore for your bedroom, I'm sorry to report that the old Gore will be back soon. People in the Gore camp insist that the winner of last year's popular vote grew the beard while on vacation in Europe and has no intention of bringing it back to America with him(although he's open to the idea of bringing back some nifty Italian sandals and an Irish fisherman's sweater he bought duty free at Shannon Airport). Yet even if Gore's new facial filaments are just a vacation thing, they indicate one thing: Al Gore is crying out for a hug. You don't have to take my word for it. To get some perspective, I called up history professor Sean Wilentz--and not merely because he holds Princeton University's Dayton-Stockton chair in history (although, he told me, there's no actual chair), but because he's survived plenty of midlife crises of his own.

Wilentz saw through Gore's new bristles and right into the former vice president's soul. "Men only grow beards when they're depressed," said Wilentz, who admitted that he once grew his own beard "when I was going through a really rough period."

"A beard allows you to hide from the old you," Wilentz added. Kiki McLean, a spokeswoman for Gore refused to comment about her boss's new look, except to say that she thought it looked "handsome and dignified."

I considered that response nothing more than blatant ass-kissing, so I did a little more checking. Since Gore invented the Internet, I surmised that he might have been using the damn thing when considering his new look. Sure enough, I came across a Web site called SunSpot.net, which bills itself as "Maryland's Online Community." Last month, the site asked its readers to answer this question: "Suppose you woke up tomorrow and were in Al Gore's body?"

While most respondents' suggestions were limited to advising Gore to hire a better campaign team next time, lose weight, get a hair transplant or "do us all a favor and commit suicide," one reader named Rebel Mensan offered Gore the only piece of advice that he seems to have followed: "I'd grow a beard," the Rebel wrote. "Anything to get rid of that Al Gore boring, wooden appearance."

The Rebel is right, and I think Gore's beard looks great (and, as the bearded author of "HAIR! Mankind's Historic Quest to End Baldness," I have a certain amount of authority on this subject--provided your definition of "certain" is "a miniscule amount").

But as the author of that best-selling book (and when I say "best-selling book," I am, of course, talking about sales within my family), I can tell you that Gore's facial hair may get him closer to single women, but it will never get him closer to the Oval Office.

These days, whiskers and the White House go together about as well as Dick Cheney and a Burger King sausage, egg and cheese Croissan'wich. In fact, you'd have to go back to Grover Cleveland (who left office in 1887) to find our last bearded president.

Abraham Lincoln was our first bearded president--although, aware that he was testing some new waters, he grew the beard after being elected. Once Lincoln established the look, every elected president until the clean-shaven William McKinley (1897-1901) sported either a beard or one of those walrus-type moustaches that might just as well have been a beard.

For an explanation, I again consulted my favorite middle-aged historian. "The period from just before the Civil War to the turn of the century was a period of significant cultural transformation in America," Wilenz said. "Historians believe Lincoln grew his beard so he would look wiser. The beard came to symbolize maturity and sagacity. It became a symbol of Christian manhood."

Christian, perhaps, but presidents of the era actually looked more like rabbis of the 1300s. Check out the beards on Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881) or short lived successor James Garfield, and you don't know if you're looking at a president, a railroad baron or a really well-groomed Airedale terrier. And Chester Arthur (1881-1885) took American history into a new era with a sideburn-mustache combo that anticipated the David Crosby look (in fact, a reference to Crosby was in Arthur's inaugural address: "Four score and seven years from now, a popular musician will try to revive this look, but end up needing a new liver....").

I'm not making this stuff up. It's all there in a seminal essay by scholar John Higham called "The Reorientation of American Culture in the 1890s" (not that I've actually read the essay, but people who have read it tell me its very important--seminal, actually). By the time McKinley was elected, beards were out. A religious man, McKinley believed that shaving was an unwritten 11th commandment. And since then, hair-free chins have been the rule and even a hint of hair could destroy a candidate's chances. After all, that five-o'clock shadow is still believed to have been Richard Nixon's downfall in his televised debate with the clean-shaven John F. Kennedy.

But maybe Gore is trying to buck the conventional wisdom, and, if so, I support him. Now, if he'd only do something about that bald spot. That thing is political cyanide.

Uncommon Knowledge

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

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