Salvatore Fodera can't help but wonder that maybe Al Gore took his advice. In February, Fodera, a New York hair stylist and a vice president himself-of the Paris-based World Hair Organization-said if Gore had a beard, maybe he would have been president.

Who knows why, but the former veep has elected to grow a beard on his European vacation. And word is that the beard likely will be goring, goring, gone before he returns stateside this week. Already, Gore's spin doctors are upset about photos appearing in the media-as if chinny chin chin sprouts are a no-no.

Besides, who says a modern-day leader must be clean-shaven? What's so wrong with a little whisker whoopee for the former West Winger and alpha male campaigner? Check it out: Brad Pitt, Tom Hanks, Russell Crowe, Johnny Depp, Kevin Spacey, and Sean Connery all sported, at one time, varying looks from brittle bristles to savage stubble.

And have we forgotten the stern, but stately, style of Abraham Lincoln?

Speaking of presidents, Richard Norton Smith, a presidential historian, biographer, and executive director of the Gerald R. Ford Foundation in Grand Rapids, Michigan, points out that besides Lincoln, our 16th president, others sported beards: Ulysses S. Grant (18th), Rutherford Hayes (19th), James Garfield (20th), and Benjamin Harrison (23rd).

What does Smith make of Gore's fuzzy face? "I don't. It's another Al Gore. I suspect we haven't seen the last of him or the last incarnation," he says, adding he suspects Gore's scruffy outcropping is a bit "of orchestrated spontaneity."

Maybe it's just a question of styling. The Gore beard, says Harold Koda, curator of the Costume Institue at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, "is a good thing, giving him a moment of self-study and introspection." But should he decide to keep it, Koda warns the politico quickly to decide on a look, something he says can be "difficult to negotiate. Beards can appear uptight and dandy or narcissistic and self-conscious. If it's too scraggly, he'll look like the Unabomber."

Or world bad guys like Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat or Cuban honcho Fidel Castro.

So Gore should keep the beard?

Of course, Fodera says, at least until 2004. Had he grown a beard for the National Democratic Convention last year in Los Angeles, he would have had "the look of maturity, wisdom and strength."

"A beard gives a man character, makes him attractive, people pay attention," Fodera says. "It's not any different than Mr. Gore wearing a blue suit and a red tie -- politically, that's a power look, so why shouldn't he have a power beard?"

Koda says today's bearded look has become "the endorsement of icons of masculinity" thanks mostly to athletes sporting goatees and beards.

Still, he understands why Gore's handlers might be squeamish. "There's a 20th-century prejudice that a man with a beard could mean he is more artistic and creative -- or even masking something -- and therefore, he's also a little less predictable, which doesn't serve too well in the political arena. But I don't really think those judgments hold anymore."

"A beard is a sign of distinction if it's well-groomed," says Ed Jeffers, the owner of the Barber Museum in a Columbus, Ohio, suburb. "A hundred years ago, governors all had beards and longer hair. Then short hair came on and beards disappeared. Now they are back. But you don't want the thing to look like you're down and out. How does Gore's look?" he asks.

Kinda patchy, we tell him.

"Sounds like he wants to experiment. I'd say his beard needs to be longer, between a half inch to an inch long."