The other day, I was talking to a prominent cognitive scientist who's done a lot of work on speech errors. He told me that in high school, he worked as a lifeguard at a pool where Joe Biden, future Senator and presidential candidate, was a supervisor. So back in 2005, when Biden said, "I'm going to the president's funeral" (replacing "pope" with "president"), and was subsequently mocked for letting his deathwish for W. hang out, the scientist thought if he dropped Biden a note, it might actually get to the man.

Buck up, the note said, this is a pretty common sort of malapropism, you made it because "president" and "pope" are both names of heads of state and you probably say "president" a lot more frequently, it doesn't mean you have a death wish, it's perfectly explainable from a psycholinguistic viewpoint.

Said scientist doesn't live in Delaware, and the note was returned unread. What Biden's presidential aspirations might have been...