Entries for January 17, 2006

Viewers of the hearings on Judge Samuel Alito may have noticed—could not have helped noticing—that Sen. Joseph Biden talked a lot. Too much, as he cheerfully admits. As he usually does. Why? My own explanation is this: As a child, Biden stuttered. Painfully so, as he told me in an interview in 1987, when he was running for president. But as a teenager in Archmere Academy, the Catholic high school he attended, he had to give a speech, and he conquered his stutter. Not so many years later, at age 29, he was elected to the Senate (he reached the constitutionally required age of 30 a month after the election). So a young man who had conquered a stutter was elected to what has amounted to, so far, a lifetime office in which you are allowed to speak as long as you want. He's been overcompensating ever since.

Here's my Creators Syndicate column for this week. Readers of the blog will find the theme familiar. I've been thinking about this theme since my years at Harvard, as this piece shows.