Senator’s volubility the talk of the town

WASHINGTON – Does Sen. Joe Biden talk too much?

Yes, said the reporters who clocked the Delaware Democrat’s questions at Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito’s hearing with stopwatches.

Yes, said the pundits who speculated that the would-be presidential candidate’s biggest political handicap might be his mouth.

Yes, said Biden himself, who went on CNN to admit he should have skipped the long-winded speeches and cut straight to his questions.

The Alito hearings should have been a place for the former Judiciary Committee chairman to shine. Here was a national forum, a chance for Biden to strut his stuff to a larger-than-usual C-SPAN audience.

It didn’t quite work out that way.

First, Biden insulted an entire university. Then his long-winded questioning style drew ridicule from columnists and late-night talk show hosts.

“It’s unfortunate, because in the middle of all that talking are some really interesting points that get lost,” said Jennifer Duffy, political analyst for the Cook Political Report.

Biden asked plenty of probing legal questions this week, but he could also veer wildly off topic.

“I don’t like Princeton,” he announced to Alito, a Princeton alumnus. The next day, Biden donned a Princeton hat for the cameras and apologized.

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen devoted his entire column to Biden’s gift for gab, warning that it could wreck his 2008 presidential ambitions.

“The only thing standing between Joe Biden and the presidency is his mouth,” Cohen wrote in a Thursday column.

Longtime Biden adviser Larry Rasky shrugged off the criticism.

“The critique of Senator Biden as, I think one reporter called it, ‘voluble,’ is not new,” he said. “If talking too much is the worst thing they can say about him, he’s doing OK.”