LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Biden’s convenient stutter

OPINION:

It should be noted that neither Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden’s talk about his past stuttering nor his advocacy on behalf of stutterers existed prior to his dismal 1988 presidential bid (“Sarah Sanders apologizes to Joe Biden after mocking stutter on Democratic debate stage,” Web, Dec. 20).

No example of Mr. Biden using an issue to his advantage is more flagrant than that of his past stuttering, which he has used to earn sympathy with voters. There is a YouTube video of Mr. Biden giving the keynote address at the annual convention of the National Stuttering Association in 2004. In the video, he admits that this event marked the first time he had ever addressed any stuttering organization or group of stutterers.

There have been African-Americans elected to the House or Senate who have immediately been advocates for African-Americans; there have been LGBTQ candidates elected who have likewise right away been tireless activists in Congress for LGBTQ causes, and Hispanic candidates who from day one have fought hard for Hispanic concerns. Mr. Biden tried to evoke sympathy by speaking of his stuttering for so many years, yet he waited until 2004 to have any contact with a group that advocates for stutterers (despite first being elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972). Furthermore, in all those years of being a high-profile U.S. senator he never championed any legislation to help stutterers through funding for speech therapy or funding for research into the causes of stuttering. Mr. Biden’s priorities in terms of policy are simply to help Joe Biden.

Mr. Biden has publicly boasted of his “solidarity” with stutterers, yet he was largely responsible for killing the 2001 nomination of Miguel Estrada to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit. Mr. Estrada, who immigrated from Honduras at age 17 not knowing English, graduated from Harvard Law School and was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. As an assistant solicitor general, Mr. Estrada argued before the Supreme Court and refused to let his stuttering hold him back. Mr. Biden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, actively helped to kill the Estrada nomination through a filibuster. The vote was never put to the full Senate, where Mr. Estrada would have most definitely won confirmation. Had he done so, Mr. Estrada likely would have been the first Hispanic on the U.S. Supreme Court, not to mention the first stutterer. Shame on you, Joe Biden.

HANH NGUYEN

Arlington, Va.