Biden’s account of his ‘stutter’ problem doesn’t add up

There is no question Biden suffered from a stutter as a child. But the details of how he overcame it are murky. The president often claims he kicked the stutter delivering a speech at his high school commencement in 1961. Part of that story is virtually impossible to corroborate.

Reporters have long been unable to confirm that Biden spoke at his graduation at all, nor did a Free Beacon review turn up any evidence of Biden delivering that address.

On the campaign trail in 1987, Biden relayed a story about how he overcame his childhood stutter. He said he overcame the affliction in a 1961 speech delivered at his high school graduation from Archmere Academy, a Delaware prep school. Reporters noted at the time that Biden initially said it was the "commencement" address, but later revised the story to say it was a "welcoming speech." Regardless of what kind of billing the speech got, Biden said it was "the hardest" one he ever delivered.

Curiously, there was one person to whom Biden did not repeat the tale: Richard Ben Cramer, whose What It Takes is based on the thousands of hours of interviews Cramer conducted over several months on the campaign trail with Biden and his opponents.

Cramer devotes more than a dozen pages to Biden’s stutter, but then-senator Biden never mentioned the triumphant graduation story, nor did seemingly anyone Cramer spoke with.

Biden does not seem to have begun telling the graduation story until his campaign fell on hard times. In a matter of weeks, Biden was caught lying about his grades in law school—he falsely…  Read more claimed he was at the "top of his class" and earned a merit scholarship, when in reality his marks were "never exceptional," according to the New York Times. Shortly thereafter, he was accused of plagiarizing speeches from Robert Kennedy and British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock.