Does Barack Obama Stutter?

I do doubt that Barack Obama may have some fluency problem. Of course, when he is delivering a speech, he is fluent and his speech is powerful. But when he is having a conversation, or when having a debate with Hillary Clinton, or John Edwards, he usually shows a lot of repetition, hesitation, and, a lot of hand gestures.

Someone suspect if it is stuttering. I say no. He has a lot of dysfluency in his speech, but they are not part-syllable repetition, sound prolongation, and silent fixation. He does not show any struggle in his speech. But definitely he is not as fluent as Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. And look at Huckabee! This past priest is so fluent that when he speaks, it seems to me that those words are flowing from his mouth without any need of thinking.

But there is something not that evident. Obama has some dysfluency, so do Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. The difference is not only in the amount and degree, but also on my reaction. When I listened to Obama’s dysfluency, it made me feel uneasy. It seemed that I could sense something not that usual, something not happened in normally fluent people often, and something that belongs to people who stutter. This happens usually when a mild stutterer listens to a severe stutterer speaking. Or even when a severe stutterer listens to a even more severe stutterer speaking. Even if you don’t see the overt struggle behaviors, you hear there is something wrong and your sensitive nerves to stuttering is fired and you feel uneasy, disgusting, negative, and want to avoid, just like when you sense of your own stuttering moment.

Next time I should read Obama’s autobiography and see if I can ever find any evidence from his own words. But now, I don’t have chance to get the answer. See, the question posted in Yahoo had been erased and I had to get it back from google cache. Political correctness or censorship or something else, I don’t know. But I do know there is no answer now.

It just substantiated my long-time doubt (but sadly, someone had proposed before) that there might exist a spectrum of fluency. Someone may be super-fluent, like Huckabee; someone may be fluent and don’t falter, like Hillary and John Edwards; someone may be fluent, but falters a lot, like Barack; and of course, there are stutterers.

I hope someone can confirm that Barack is a stutterer. Then SFA and NSA will have a new role model for poor stuttering children.