Good thing you and your cohorts didn't live in 1860. Lincoln would have never been elected.
Might be right.
Accounts of Lincoln's Cooper Union speech make note of his odd Western appearance. He apparently overcame his own physical oddities with a forceful speaking style that won over the more "refined" Easterners.
Observer Joseph H. Choate, who wrote a biography of Mr. Lincoln several decades later, noted: "He appeared in every sense of the word like one of the plain people among whom he loved to be counted. At first sight there was nothing impressive or imposing about him; his clothes hung awkwardly on his giant frame; his face was of a dark pallor without the slightest tinge of colour; his seamed and rugged features bore the furrows of hardship and struggle; his deep-set eyes looked sad and anxious; his countenance in repose gave little evidence of the brilliant power which raised him from the lowest to the highest station among his countrymen; as he talked to me before the meeting he seemed ill at ease."
Choate observed; "When he spoke, he was transformed; his eye kindled, his voice rang, his face shone and seemed to light up the whole assembly. For an hour and a half he held his audience in the hollow of his hand. His style of speech and manner of deliver were severely simple. What Lowell called 'The grand simplicities of the Bible,' with which he was so familiar, were reflected in his discourse....It was marvelous to see how this untutored man, by mere self-discipline and the chastening of his own spirit, had outgrown all meretricious arts, and found his own way to the grandeur and strength of absolute simplicity."
http://www.mrlincolnandnewyork.org/inside.asp?ID=14&subjectID=2