Politicians and facial hair

Politics in Spain is hardly an edifying spectacle; and the longer you watch it, the more you understand how they came about to fight a bloody civil war (1936-1939). What is interesting though, is that a lot of politicians sport bears of all kinds: mustachoes, goatees, and full beards, and it is no prerogative of some left-wing, generation 1968-types. The leader of the conservative Popular party, Mariano Rajoy, has one, too. The second vice-prime minister and finance and economics minister, Pedro Solbes, wears one, some times in the form of a three-days-shade, sometimes fuller grown. The new justice minister whose name sounds somewhat like "Canaan" wears the thickest one I have seen in politicians yet. And there is Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief, of course. In the US, I cannot remember any cabinet secretary with a beard, though Ben Bernanke sports one. In Germany, the sometime SPD boss and prime minister of Rhenania-Palatinate, Kurt Beck, wears one, but I would not call him the typical politician - think he is a craftsman, not a lawyer, and married to a hairdresser...