We have not had a president with facial hair since Taft! Nothing can make a man look both more intellectually appealing and well... manly quite like a beard. Beards can portray America's rugged individualism in the artistic form of a goatee, mutton chops, or perhaps even a full-blown Gandalf.
Barack Obama would benefit greatly from this fuzzy addition to the presidential jawline by increasing his appeal to the academic elite as well as rendering himself a better diplomat in a matter of weeks (No sovereign state can resist the soothing manliness of a full beard, just look what the most interesting man in the world has done to the American public).