Readers Write: The presidential race

Opinion editor’s note: Star Tribune Opinion publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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Patricia Lopez trots out the usual tired talking points defending the president’s disturbing debate performance last Thursday (”Replacing Joe Biden is a fantasy Democrats must abandon,” StarTribune.com, July 2). They might carry some weight to a reader who didn’t watch it.

But for those of us who did, what we saw was not a president struggling with a “stutter” or a lack of “slick” debating skills, as Lopez absurdly suggests, but a man who holds the world’s most powerful and demanding job — and wants us to keep him in it until 2029 — who seemingly cannot complete simple sentences or maintain a basic train of thought. It was an alarming thing to see. And sad.

Here’s a simple suggestion. If the president is truly sharper mentally than he appeared to be Thursday night, let’s give him a mulligan and let him prove it. The White House should schedule a two-hour news conference and allow the supposedly adept Joe Biden answer unfiltered questions from the press. That’s not too much to ask from the commander in chief, especially one who has been in politics over 50 years.

If he does well, kudos to the president — and point proven. If he doesn’t, well, then there’s no debating his decline is real. Don’t voters deserve to know which is which?

But if the president’s supporters won’t endorse that simple idea and continue to insist he remain shielded behind a teleprompter, then we know what they really think about where Biden is cognitively. And that says a lot about their supposed care for good government and American democracy.

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Calls for Biden to remove himself as a presidential candidate are naive and shallow. We must move beyond the performance at the presidential debate and focus on the substance. A side-by-side transcript of the words that were said that night would be telling. It would shed light on who was truly stammering, repeating words and talking nonsense and who actually answered the questions and had command of the facts.

Electing a president is about more than one person. We elect an entire administration and a political philosophy that informs all functions of our government and thus touches the lives of all Americans. We continue to experience the effects of four years of a Trump presidency, and just when you think you have seen everything, the Supreme Court effectively raises this one person above the law and above the basic philosophy that our country was founded on — that leadership of America is not about one single person, it is of, by and for the people.

Voting for substance over bombastic performance, for commitment to democracy for all over the protection of a select few seeking limitless power, for leadership with integrity and intelligence over lies and egos, will determine what or if we celebrate on our next Independence Day. We the people need to get over discussions about gray hair and focus on the decision ahead through a much longer lens. The choice could not be more stark.

Mary McGarry Woitte, Eden Prairie

This is in response to the two commentaries “Why I plan to vote for Joe Biden again” by Ken Tobacman and “Biden worries are not just about the election” by Ross Douthat (Opinion Exchange, July 2). The Tobacman commentary waxed philosophical on who Biden has been with no reasonable argument on whether he will stay that way through another term. His primary theme was “us old guys have to stick together.” It was a poor argument. Douthat, on the other hand, gave an unusually cogent argument on why neither Biden or Trump should be president. Trump has completely lost his filters. He rambles from the absurd to the crazy and is a walking, talking manure spreader. Despite his apologists, there is no guarantee he will behave better as president, or not get worse. Trump is literally a journey into the unknown.

Biden, on the other hand, is not. His performance in the recent debate is the best he is ever going to be, and no one improves with age. Biden’s apologists blame his poor performance on everything from a cold to it having been past his bedtime. When my father was 81 he was still fairly sharp, but, like Biden, he was showing signs of mental decline and losing his filters. By the time my father was 85, he had deteriorated to the point where I had to put him in an assisted-living facility. The one single thing my father, Biden and Trump have in common is their denial anything is wrong with them. The presidential election this fall will be a choice between the outrageous and the ridiculous. Good times if you’re into eschatology, not so much otherwise.

Thomas Jesberg, East Bethel

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We’ve heard a lot about Biden’s debate performance. Let’s focus for a moment on Trump’s performance. He used the “Gish gallop,” a technique that Heather Cox Richardson describes as overwhelming the debate opponent with a barrage of lies and nonsense. There is no way for the opponent to respond to this in a debate format without seeming baffled and confused. W.C. Fields supposedly said, “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with [B.S.]!”

Kay McCarthy, Bloomington

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Regarding “Replacing Joe Biden is a fantasy Democrats must abandon”: If you wish for Trump to return to the White House, retaining Biden as the Democratic candidate will almost guarantee it. His debate was not due to a raspy cold or just a bad night. A debate, unlike reading from a teleprompter or speaking at a rally, requires a higher level of cognitive skill. As a Republican who has come out in favor of Biden, I was embarrassed to say the least. It’s no wonder Biden has refused to be interviewed by major newspapers or make himself available for many news conferences. No major corporation would think of hiring a CEO who performed so poorly. It’s time Democrats remove their heads from the sand before they get kicked in the “fantasy.”

Ron Bagnall, Lakeville

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Ryan Pulkrabek, Minneapolis

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Many members of the Democratic Party mocked and ridiculed Phillips for challenging Biden in the early primary. After the abysmal debate performance and current national discussion, perhaps Phillips deserves an apology.