When Barbara Boxer arrived in the U.S. Senate, her image as a fiery liberal from Marin County — land of crystals, hot tubs and aging hippies — preceded her. It was not a good thing. 'The word was that I was this very militant feminist and the guys were frightened to death,' Boxer recalled. The colleague who smoothed her path — 'She's good people,' he assured the Old Bulls — was Joe Biden, who by 1993 was already starting his second decade on Capitol Hill.
The situation with Biden is different, Boxer said. 'We don't know what happened with Joe,' she said, still puzzled nearly a week later. She speculated. Perhaps his lifelong stutter kicked in under the studio lights? Maybe Biden suffered from a terrible head cold, or from cold medication he'd taken? 'I think the president owes the country an explanation,' Boxer said.