Rudy Giuliani's Lisp

Rudy Giuliani has a lisp. If he's elected, he will be our first President with a lisp. (Lincoln had a thin reedy voice. Chester Alan Arthur was a stammerer. Neither had lisps.) This is no small thing in a political culture in which the smallest flaws are magnified: Hillary's Cackle ... Thompson's baggy eyes ... Obama's mole ... Chris Dodd's James-and-the-Giant-Peach-sized head ...

Full disclosure: I have a lisp.

This week I sat down with eminent speech pathologist and accent coach Sam Chwat, director of New York Speech Improvement Services, to talk about Rudy's lisp. Sam is also known as "the Speech Therapist to the Stars": he helped Julia Roberts shed her Southern drawl and was dialect coach to Robert De Niro when he needed an Appalachian accent for Cape Fear.

Sam is confident that Rudy could eliminate his lisp in just a few sessions. He knows of what he speaks, I suppose, and Rudy has a legendary work ethic. Still, losing a lisp is no simple task ... (Don't ask me to say that last sentence.)