Michael Barone

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.

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