Will The Election Hinge On Hairstyles?

Former Sen. John Edwards should have been a front-runner for the Democratic nomination in 2008. He was the 2004 vice presidential nominee and reminded voters and pundits of JFK. There were only two problems: Barack Obama, the fresh new face of the Democratic Party, and a YouTube video titled "John Edwards Feeling Pretty."

Edwards has wonderful hair. So wonderful that Sen. John Kerry often joked: "We've got better ideas. We've got great plans. We've got a better sense of what's happening in America. And we've got better hair." Vice President Dick Cheney, bald and tubby, said of Edwards' immaculate coif: "People tell me that Senator Edwards got picked for his good looks, his sex appeal and his great hair. I say to them: How do you think I got the job?"Got Hair?: Where your campaign donations go....

The jokes were damaging but not lethal. Too much focus on hair is never a good thing, particularly when you're a politician short on gravitas, but Edwards was still a serious candidate. However, the YouTube video changed everything. In it, Edwards's stylist works on his hair for almost two minutes. Then, unsatisfied with the stylist, Edwards whips out a compact mirror and begins playing with his own locks. The soundtrack playing in the background: "I Feel Pretty," from West Side Story. As of January 23, 2008, more than a million people have viewed the video.

As I explain in my new book, Project President: Bad Hair and Botox on the Road to the White House, nothing matters more on the campaign trail than image. Edwards and his supporters have tried to minimize the silly idea that his hair is relevant to his qualifications, but the simple fact is that it's relevant because we think it's relevant.

Candidates tell us what we want to hear, say all the right things, and promise us the world. But it's really about personality because we vote for whom we trust. We vote not for a platform, but for a person. And in politics, a person is only as real as his or her image.

Scientists have found that we judge people within seconds of meeting them. Princeton University psychologists Janine Willis and Alexander Todorov found that people make hair-trigger judgments (forgive the pun) within less than one tenth of one second as to whether strangers are attractive, likable, competent and trustworthy. Those judgments rarely change, even after we take time to reconsider.

So politicians obsessively shape their public images. They fret over their hair, height and age. They hire speechwriters to pen jokes. They wear boots instead of loafers. They take pictures on horseback rather than on golf courses. Cowboy Candidates: We like 'em rugged.It's an old joke that Washington, D.C. is Hollywood for ugly people.

Roger Ailes, campaign aide to Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush, put it this way: "You can have the greatest head of hair in the world, or the greatest smile, or the greatest voice, or whatever... Enough of that image has to be working in your favor for you to be liked, accepted, and given what you want."

Many Americans believe this is symptomatic of a new politics that values image over substance. Bill Clinton feels our pain and George W. Bush is a cowboy. But it's always been this way, going all the way back to George Washington, who was careful to wear his uniform virtually everywhere, enshrining his military service in the eyes of his countrymen.

Lincoln used his height to his advantage, grew a beard, and talked incessantly about his rail-splitting days, appealing to the rustic vote. Teddy Roosevelt rode horses for the cameras despite the fact that he enjoyed elitist sports such as tennis and golf. Harrison guzzled hard cider on the campaign trail in order to demonstrate his virility at age 68. Even FDR, one of America's most beloved presidents, fretted over his image, going to great lengths to hide the fact that polio had crippled his body.

For all the effort that politicians put into fooling us, however, the funny thing is that Americans are superb at spotting phonies. In our media-saturated culture, candidates cannot "act" every second of every minute of every day. They inevitably slip and the media is there to catch them.

This is good because it ensures that our politicians can't hide the realities of their characters. Lincoln was a backwoodsman, a rustic intellectual so ugly he grew a beard to hide it. Lincoln: The Real DealTeddy Roosevelt was an arrogant cowboy. Bill Clinton is a likable cad rather than a straight-arrow upper-class intellectual. George W. Bush is a clumsy but sincere cowboy, not an Eastern establishment candidate. It's the candidates who try to hide their true selves -- Hillary Clinton playing Ms. Femininity or Mitt Romney playing the man of the people -- who have serious image problems.

The best image candidates in the current field are Obama and John McCain, but both face challenges. Obama's youth is a burden because Americans actually prefer slightly older candidates. During the 19th century, the average president was elected at age fifty-six. The youngest elected president of the nineteenth century, Ulysses S. Grant, was forty-six -- and his victory was almost entirely due to his Civil War heroism. Politics was an old man's game.

And it remains an old man's game -- or perhaps an old woman's. Over the last century the average American life expectancy rose dramatically, but the average age of our elected presidents did not change from fifty-six. In elections from 1952 onward, presidents were elected at an average age of fifty-eight, hardly a revolution of the TV age.

McCain, by contrast, is a seasoned war veteran, the type of independent western cowboy that Americans love. But he will be 72 by the time of the election. Bob Dole: Horny, Not FunnyIn order to overcome the age issue, McCain will have to demonstrate vitality rather than vitriol. So far, he has done a mediocre job. When a young audience member asked him if he was too old to run for president, McCain caustically joked: "Thanks for the question, you little jerk. You're drafted." It was funny -- but it was Bob Dole circa 1996 funny.

All of the candidates have weaknesses in their images, but it's the same story every four years. The question is whether the 2008 candidates can create a winning image while remaining true to who they are. Our best presidents have been able to bridge that gap -- even if they did obsessively comb their own hair.