As the candidates' appearances have become more frequent and their campaign talking points more familiar, attention tends to drift and the eyes wander. They settle on the hair, and for a few moments, it is zealously studied. This is true for all of the candidates except Al Sharpton, whose stunning James Brown flip is a triumph of chemicals and heat over nature. Over the years his hair has been parsed in a small volume of literature touching on race, class and sheer theatrical chutzpah.
Seven of the nine Democratic candidates have the same haircut, with only slight modifications to accommodate the texture of their hair. It is the haircut that boys are often given on their first trip to the barber. And as many men are loath to experiment with their hair, it is often the cut that, decades later, they take to the grave. It is the "regular guy" haircut: parted on the side, clipped short at the temples, not too much layering lest it look as though a Hugh Grant/Brad Pitt/Tom Cruise degree of thought might have gone into it. It is self-consciously unstyled, a cut that camouflages any furtive use of a blow dryer or styling product. It is the cut that Dan Rather ditched when he wanted to look more modern. Richard Gephardt, Dennis Kucinich, Joe Lieberman, John Kerry, Dean and Clark all part their hair on the left. John Edwards, 50, parts his low on the right and a thick mane flops across his forehead like an inverted Nike Swoosh. It is an old man's haircut -- neither short nor rakishly long. Just unremarkably there.
Kucinich, 57, brushes his hair back away from his face and in that simple gesture manages to look looser and less prepackaged than the other candidates. But one suspects that he might need to dip his head in glue and give himself dreadlocks just to get an occasional double take.
For most of the gentlemen, their hairstyles are, if not flattering, at least not distracting. And that is the ankle-high bar that these candidates aspire to clear. But Lieberman, 61, doesn't even manage that. Because his hairline begins at the same latitude as his ears, the vast expanse of furrowed frontage emphasizes that the senator could soon be in danger of perpetuating the comb-over. A haircut that was shorter around the ears would be more flattering. How one's hair is coiffed has nothing to do with foreign policy, but as a matter of etiquette, a tidy haircut would be easier on the eyes than the gray tufts poking out from behind his ears. Lieberman often comes off as the stodgiest of the candidates. His haircut only underscores the sense that he is the sort of fellow who'd hand out apples on Halloween.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38543-2003Nov13.html
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