Did I hear that right?

A hearing impairment Liberal leader Stephane Dion recently blamed for his difficulty speaking English perfectly could be attributed to sensory neural hearing loss, which can limit the quality of sounds to the point that they are no longer comprehensible, audiologists said yesterday.

...

Hearing experts contacted yesterday said they could not be certain without viewing an audiogram, a "vision test for the ears," but surmised that Mr. Dion could be suffering from a sensory neural hearing loss, which often leads to trouble hearing in crowds.

I'm not quite certain that I get this. Monsieur Dion is suggesting that the reason his spoken English is so poor all the time, is because he has trouble making out what people are saying at cocktail parties? Wouldn't the more likely manifestation of this specific impairment be a preponderance of clear and articulate non sequiturs when he is answering questions in a crowd? Rather than what we've got: just sheer, incomprehensible gobbledygook?