I’m serious hoping I don’t go bald. Because, based on my research, it’s nearly impossible to be elected President of the United States, if you’re bald.
The last time a bald person was elected president was 1956, and Ike Eisenhower had to win World War II in order to win the election.
I cringe at the thought of someone winning World War III, just to try and get elected.
Prior to Eisenhower, you have to go all the way back to the election of 1836 and Martin Van Buren. But his enormous white sideburns compensated. You hardly even noticed his head, in fact.
When President John F. Kennedy — with a full head of hair — went hatless during his Inauguration speech in 1961, he committed what was in essence a double homicide. He sunk the hat industry, and ruined the prospect that any bald man would ever again be elected to the nation’s highest office.
Actually, no one is sure if Donald Trump is bald. His unusual hair style has been subject to various theories, none if which would qualify as ‘conspiracy theories’.
This video suggests that it’s all the real deal.
But we know that some men grow a little tuft of hair in the front, and are utterly bald in the back. So I am not completely convinced. There definitely seems to be some kind of comb-over business going on.
I suppose we’re all pretty sure Joe Biden still has some real hair, although at least one report claims the crop was “re-seeded”. As in, a “re-seeded hairline”.
Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley appear to have real hair, which speaks well for their chances.
Ronald Reagan might have had the best hair of all the recent presidents. I suspect First-Lady Nancy kept a close eye on him, and his hair.
How important is real hair?
John McCain — who was only “partially bald” — lost the 2008 election to Barack Obama… a Democrat, no less… whose father was African, and who might not have been born in the U.S.
We’re talking, like, “important”.
All of this prejudice against bald men as President makes very little sense. As far as I can tell, the Buddha was bald, and he has a following of maybe 520 million people.
Yul Brynner won an Academy Award for Best Actor in 1956. But that was the same year Eisenhower was re-elected, so maybe that doesn’t count.
And Yul Brynner couldn’t be elected President anyway, because he was born in Russia.
The country’s most prolifically failed presidential candidate, Harold Stassen, ran nine times, and in many of those elections he wore a toupee so alarming that the Washington Post thought it resembled a “sullen possum that had been dipped in bronze.”
Bald men can still manage to get elected Governor (we’re looking at you, Jared Polis)… and maybe even to Congress… although it’s a long shot; probably helps if you’re photographed, occasionally, wearing a gun.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.