While Vance has portrayed himself as a working man’s candidate, his selective criticism of corporate power is at best a secondary act in a more encompassing tirade against 21st-century modernity, whose primary sin has been to dismantle nuclear families supported by a child-rearing woman and make men miserable in the process. In that sense, Vance’s beard meets the moment of his party – one that, like some of its 16th century forebears, seeks to project toughness, aggression and grievance in an age where Republicans perceive masculinity as an endangered value. It doesn’t matter that Vance is friends with largely beardless Silicon Valley billionaires or provided legal representation to big pharmaceutical companies that fueled much of the opioid crisis that Republicans blame on immigrants – his performance has persuaded his supporters that he is the rugged everyman, and the beard is one of his most important props.
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