Based on several comments I want to make clear this is a serious commentary and not meant to be frivolous. Optics in politics are important. Candidates pay a lot of attention to how they look from hair styles to the clothes they wear.
Correction:
I originally confused two mustachioed celebrities. Ironically one was Tom Selleck referenced in the original title who is conservative and former board member and spokesman for the NRA, and the other who I meant, Burt Reynolds whose politics in the Trump era were more complex.
This story/diary has elicited some insulting and a few profane comments for reasons that the writers have not explained. It is meant to be understood as an aspect of political science. There is even a profession of political image consultants: Anna Wintour, a style consultant, advised Hillary Rodham Clinton on her wardrobe in her campaign against Donald Trump, for example.
The Washington Post covered this in How politicians get camera-ready: Stylists and media training.
Image consultants can get a bad rap — in his announcement video, Trump primary challenger and former congressman Joe Walsh said he rejected advice to enlist an image consultant — but they are, for better or worse, a reality of American politics.
First, there’s Bernie Sanders’s shlumpy self-presentation. Hallberg (the image consultant) thinks Sanders pulls off the bedraggled shtick authentically but wouldn’t coach clients to use his hand gestures or posture. To Rothman (another consultant), Sanders is a throwback to a time when visiting your congressman’s office and seeing a mustard stain on his tie made him “relatable.”
Then there’s Andrew Yang’s much-talked-about no-tie gamble. Rothman believes his no-tie look broadcasts executive presence. “You’re having 14-hour days. There are different temperatures, and you’re just being efficient in your look,” she said. (For the record, no image consultant advised Yang to go tieless, said campaign press secretary Randy Jones. “It might be a better story if that were the case, but that isn’t the case.”)
This is from The New York Times:
Excerpts:
“When I do media training, I always tell my clients 10 percent of how you are received is what you actually said,” said Hilary Rosen, a Democratic strategist and media consultant with SKDKnickerbocker. “Fifteen percent is how you said what you said, and 75 percent is how you appear.”
This is some of what the author wrote about about Pete Buttigieg:
The 37-year-old mayor from South Bend, Ind., has been a savant at using his costume to frame his communications. Relentless in his allegiance to a pristine white shirt, pressed navy dress slacks and a narrow marine blue tie, almost always sans suit jacket, he manages to look Just Like Us (or at least just like the guy from the J. Crew catalog everyone gets).
At the same time, however, he also looks like a one-off in his focus and decision-making capability. (How many of us have the discipline to wear the same thing every single day?)
It is notable that unlike many of his generation, who eschew the tie when attempting to differentiate themselves from their forebears, he has chosen to drop the jacket. That, along with the tie width, give him new-gen cred to go with his new-gen pitch.
But the fact that he still wears a tie, plus at least half of a suit, suggests respect for the establishment’s traditions, and reassures more conservative voters that the first major gay presidential candidate is not so different from them after all. The color scheme implies blue sky thinking, and the net effect is Boy Scout next door, which, if you are trying to convince older voters of your seriousness of purpose, is badge worthy.
Want to become an image consultant? You can enroll in the London Image Institute. A well known one can earn $500 an hour.
Now for my original essay:
Some of you may have noticed that Mayor Pete Buttigieg had what looked like it might be the start of a mustache in the debate last night. He tends to have a five o’clock shadow on his upper lip in some of his photographs.
I got to wondering how it would look if the 38 yr. old actually let the mustache grow out. Would it give him more gravitas, when for example, he stands next to Bernie Sanders who is 40 years older than he is?
Burt Reynolds, who died in 2018 is known for many things. Of course his breakout role was in Deliverance in 1972, paired perhaps ironically with one of Trump’s few celebrity supporters John Voight.
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I recall his long time romance with Dinah Shore, 20 years his senior. He is also known for his marriage to and divorce from Loni Anderson, posing naked in the April 1972 issue of Cosmopolitan, “Smokey and the Bandit” and much more.
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I think Reynolds is sorely underrated as comedic and a serious actor. I decided to give Mayor Pete his mustache as a tribute to Reynolds.
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These are the presidents who had mustaches:
Four of our presidents in a row had beards:
What do you think? Would Mayor Pete benefit politically from sporting a mustache?