Biden had a stutter as a child. How he overcame it helped shape his character and speaking style
WASHINGTON - One of Joe Biden's proudest childhood accomplishments was a five-minute speech to his all-boys Catholic high school in Delaware.
The assignment was routine - a public-speaking requirement for all students. But for Biden, it was a triumph in a long struggle to overcome a debilitating stutter.
That struggle led him to brawl with schoolyard bullies, to memorize and recite Irish poetry, and to witness his mother threaten a nun who had humiliated him.
Six decades later, as Biden campaigns for president with his trademark long-winded oratory, few voters would guess he was ever at a loss for words. But he has referred to his struggle with stuttering as "the single most defining thing in (his) life."
Speech experts say his history of stuttering does not explain all of Biden's verbal oddities - it does not account for attention-grabbing
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