> I don't know how good the grounds were, but many after
> the 1960 election
> attributed Kennedy's victory to Nixon's
> 5-o'clock shadow. Certainly it
> would seem improbable that the _arguments_ offered by
> either would have
> any appreciable effect.
Wasn't it claimed, though, that radio listeners thought Nixon won? Perhaps that's how they came to speculate that it was Nixon's "5-c'clock shadow". If that is what they based it upon, they could have just as well speculated that the reason radio-listeners preferred Nixon was due to Kennedy's grating accent.