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John Hendrickson
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John Hendrickson
Senior Editor, The Atlantic
John Hendrickson is a senior editor at The Atlantic and the author of Life on Delay: Making Peace with a Stutter.
The following interview was conducted by FRONTLINE’s Jim Gilmore on June 29, 2020. It has been edited for clarity and length.
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Biden’s Stutter on the Campaign Trail
Let’s start out.Tell me first why you wrote that piece, the November 2019 piece.1What was the idea, why you thought this was an important topic — why was it?
1
The Atlantic: What Joe Biden Can’t Bring Himself to Say
When Joe Biden first entered the Democratic presidential primary race at the end of April 2019, pundits immediately thought something was wrong.During his rallies and stump speeches and other television appearances, Biden was tripping over a lot of words and sounds.The party line quickly became that Biden wasn’t all there and that he was losing his edge—that he wasn’t as sharp as he once was.
What I saw and what I think other people who stutter saw was a man dealing with classic dysfluency issues.Now, that doesn’t explain everything.It’s certainly not black and white.It’s not some one-size-fits-all answer.But often Biden appears to know exactly what he wants to say, but it doesn’t come out that way.
Stuttering as a Child
Talk about the early days for Joe, what stuttering would have done, what it meant for him, how difficult it was, what comes with stuttering—the bullying, the self-esteem issues.Talk a little bit about what you think would have been the reality for Joe early on because of his stuttering.
It’s very hard to wake up every day and to not be able to do something as simple as talk.Many people don’t have to think about talking; it just comes out effortlessly, naturally.Biden is among the 70 million people around the world with the neurological disorder known as stuttering.When you’re young, it instantly makes you a target for bullies.You’re immediately not like any of the other kids.The perception of people who—people who stutter is that they are weak, nervous, anxious or even just dumb kids.But it’s a lot more complicated than that.
Dealing with this every day as well gives you a certain grit, and I believe Biden learned that grit at a very young age.
What does it do to a kid, though?Take us into — you can get into his head a little bit more than most people because you’ve experienced it.What does it do to a kid getting the nicknames, the bullying?How does it affect you?
I think it affects you in a lot of ways.… You know, on the surface, you try not to show any reaction, not to show any emotion when a bullyer or another person is demeaning the most vulnerable part of you.By yourself, though, in those quiet moments, you know, it hurts.And you think about it, and you replay these situations in your mind.I think it has the ability to knock you down and make you want to quit and just not talk and just not try to socialize, not even try to read out loud in class or do anything resembling public speaking at all.But it can also give you this tremendous sense of resolve.It can make you want to prove everybody wrong and say, “No, I have something to say.”
Did he ever talk about Uncle Boo Boo with you, his uncle that lived in the same room with him when he was growing up and the effect that his uncle’s stuttering had on him and his endeavor to conquer it, because he felt that Boo Boo had not succeeded in life because of it?
Biden referenced him to me as a very smart person, a very capable person.In Biden’s memoir, <i>Promises to Keep</i>, he talks about his uncle’s stutter as really holding him back in life and preventing him from living a full life.I think that was very tough for Biden to witness that up close.And I think it kind of scared him a little bit.Every person who—person who stutters has these moments when they’re scared: Will I ever get married?Will I ever be able to read a book out loud to my kids?Will I ever hold down a real job if I can’t talk?I’m sure all of those questions passed through Biden’s mind at one point or another.
Overcoming Stuttering
So what does he do to try to overcome it?You talk about in the article a couple things: the pebbles in the mouth, the talking in the mirror.Explain what he told you.What did he do to try to overcome it?
Biden’s parents took him to speech therapy in kindergarten, although it didn’t prove all that successful.As a young teenager, Biden would stand in front of his bedroom mirror holding a flashlight to his face, and he would recite Yeats and Emerson, trying to practice reading and speaking rhythmically.And when you think of poetry or you think of song, it’s all phrases.It isn’t individual words.So Biden would stand there and say, “meek young men,” dah dah, dah dah, dah dah, dah dah, dah dah.
And it’s almost like double Dutch jumping rope, like you’re trying to get in there, and keep going and then you’re trying to just go as long as you can without blocking or repeating or losing airflow on a word or phrase.
Shame and Bullying
It’s not an easy thing that you’re talking about.He must have been amazingly driven or scared or something.What did it seem to you was causing this kid to do this exceptional stuff to try to conquer this?
People made fun of him.A Catholic nun mocked him in front of his seventh-grade class as he was reading out loud.And he said “gentle man” instead of “gentleman.”And the nun said, “Mr. B-B-B-B-Biden, what’s that word?”And this is a person in a position of authority; this is a person who’s meant to protect you.
Two years later, when he arrived in high school, Archmere Academy, an all-male school, a very macho environment, the other guys mocked him, called him a stutterhead; they’d address him as “hey, stut.”Called him “Dash,” as in Morse code: dot, dot, dot, dash, dash, dash.Classmates of his I interviewed told me that Biden would just take it all on the chin, and then he would kind of nod and smile and just kind of go along.
But I think it had a profound effect on him, as it does on any person who stutters.When you’re that age, you hate this part of yourself more than anyone hates this part of yourself.You want it to go away more than anyone wants it to go away.I think he was determined to eventually be a person who could give speeches.
You write about the question of shame and how this can cause shame, how it can affect your own self-worth.Was that part of what was going on, to him?
Biden was raised in a Catholic household, and shame and guilt are very big parts of the Catholic faith.I think more than anything Biden felt the need to prove himself, felt the need to prove that he deserved to be there, too, despite not being able to talk like all the other kids.You know, he was a football player and generally a big athlete, and he was class president.And by accounts he was popular.But all of that really doesn’t matter if every day you’re dealing with this demon inside you and you feel like you can never conquer it.
Biden’s Draw to Politics
We talked about that he seemed—the religion aspect of it also seemed to come with a calling—that he felt he had a calling to do great things.He was very interested in politics early on.How does that come in to play, that one of the reasons he was so driven is this feeling of responsibility, this feeling that he was meant to do something?
Biden and I have not talked about his calling or running for president as a calling or public service as a calling.Based on what he’s written and other things he’s told other people, I think one can make an argument that Biden, in the grand tradition of a lot of old, epic storytellers, sees himself as embarking on a rather epic-like journey.And there’s no arguing that his life has had a fair share of trials and tribulations, from the car accident that claimed the life of his wife and injured his young sons, to Beau Biden dying of brain cancer, to Biden’s brain aneurysms, to walking around every day with a neurological disorder of stuttering that you have to manage while on the biggest stage in the world.
The Lasting Effects of a Stutter
So he conquered it, or whatever.You can’t completely conquer something, but most people don’t even know that he has a stutter.But what’s the lasting results?From what you know, and what's sort of your conversations with him, what are the lasting effects of having a stutter when you’re a kid?This is something that certainly makes an impression upon you.What’s your overview on that?
Stuttering teaches you empathy at a very young age because carrying out simple tasks, such as ordering a sandwich, prove to be extremely challenging.And when you can’t just live your daily life doing these basic things without a great deal of difficulty, you look around at others who are dealing with a lot themselves and you feel for them.You identify with them.You empathize with them.Some disabilities are apparent when a person leaves their house.They could be handicapped.They could be in a wheelchair.They could be blind.Other disabilities, such as stuttering, are invisible until the moment they manifest.That’s very hard, because you feel like you’re walking around with this secret, and you’re constantly trying to keep it from coming out.
You write that stuttering feels like a series of betrayals, that it feels like you’re being sucked into a black hole.What did you mean by that?
The “black hole” is actually Biden’s phrase, not mine.Biden told me while watching the movie <i>The King’s Speech</i>, that those moments of King George getting up to talk in front of thousands of people, that really hit him in a very fundamental way.And he could remember that feeling of dread getting up to speak as a young man, and that it was like being sucked into a black hole, like you would feel this hollow core in your chest.Interestingly enough, Biden used a very similar phrase in his memoir when he described the 1972 car accident that killed his wife and injured his young sons.
The betrayal aspect of things that you talked about, what did you mean by that?
When I say stuttering can feel like a series of betrayals, betrayal’s really about missed expectations.We’re taught to believe that our minds and our bodies and muscles like vocal cords and lungs that are going to deliver airflow, propel speech; we’re taught to believe that the whole machine just works.And you don’t have to think about it; it just—everything works in concert, and it’s just going to be there for you.
Any type of speech disorder, not to mention dozens of other bodily disorders, it can feel like a broken promise, like: “Why is my body working against me?What did I do?Why aren’t we on the same team?”And then you try to recall these solutions and quick fixes, and frequently they don’t come, and that’s another betrayal.And then friends and family or teachers, like the Catholic nun, they’re supposed to be there to protect you, and sometimes that doesn’t happen either.
So I think early on, people who stutter learn perseverance, and they have to just keep going.They have to just keep waking up every day and just go, go, go forward.
He’s certainly done that.He seems to be reticent to admit, or in the past he has been, to admit the fact that he is a stutterer or whatever the hell that means, that though he conquered it mostly, the reality is it’s not something that you can completely conquer.Why do you think that is?And does that say something about his need to have conquered it, his fear of it coming back or whatever?What do you think that means?
Biden has occasionally used present-tense verbs when discussing his own stutter.More often than not, though, Biden uses past-tense verbs, and he’ll use phrases like, “I overcame stuttering.”But in the past year in particular, he has become more and more comfortable letting his guard down a little bit and saying phrases like, you know, “Some days my old stuttering days come back.”
There was a CNN town hall in which he talked to the mother of a person who stuttered, and he really opened up, and it was very real.And that exchange jumped out to a lot of people.
He came of age in another time in which people weren’t as open about disorders or disabilities or setbacks, when the common prescription was, “buck up, deal with it,” when admitting any type of personal flaw or imperfection was a sign of weakness, the opposite of mid-50s masculinity.These are different times now, and there’s this vibrant neurodiversity movement.There’s a vibrant disability advocate community.And I think he’s finding his way.
Age and Stuttering
The age thing also, I thought which was interesting, is that people might see more of the stuttering, simply not because, you know,Trump is going to use the fact that he’s losing his marbles, or whatever the hell it is that he’s going to basically use, which we all know he will, but the reality is, he is 77 years old, and it takes a lot of energy to sometimes talk if you have a stutter.Explain that and how that might define a little bit about what people will see in the debates or what’s going on.
It takes an enormous amount of energy to talk when you have a stutter.Right now as I’m trying to do this interview with you, my lungs and airway, my diaphragm, my stomach muscles are clenching, contracting or just kind of behaving erratically.I’m able to talk and breathe, although it’s not very smooth.Now imagine I’m on a debate stage when there’s a national live audience of millions watching on TV.And in the general election this year, when you’re facing off a candidate like Donald Trump, who is known for zeroing in on someone’s weakness and exploiting it, many people would say Biden’s stutter is among his most visible weaknesses, if not number one.But it’s also a source of his strength.It’s also the main source of his grit and his determination to just be there competing.
And lastly … overall, you look at the man today, and you look at what he’s gone through, the tragedies of his life but also dealing with the stuttering. …What has the effect of stuttering been on him long-term, or the biggest effects that stuttering has had on him overall, that you see, that you understand from his experiences?
I think it brings him back down to earth.I think it constantly reminds him that everybody’s dealing with something, if not multiple somethings.And when you go to the deli and you try to order a sandwich and people laugh at you, that’s a lot of daily indignity over time, over the years, over decades.It’s a humbling interaction.
And when it happens every day, week after week, month after month, decade after decade, it can beat you down, but it can also drive you to try to succeed in spite of your very visible setback.It can drive you to want to prove people wrong.And when you see others struggling with anything, it’s much easier to see where people are coming from.Because whatever they’re feeling in this moment, you probably felt that way earlier today.
Stuttering has a unique way of popping everyone’s bubble, of shattering a concept of yourself, and always reminding you things are hard; this is hard.
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