Some letters to the New York Times

To paraphrase the great Mark Twain, your report of President Biden’s cognitive demise is greatly exaggerated. Not to mention premature.

The president is probably one of the worst extemporaneous public speakers to hold his office. Age has made his lack of skill in this area worse, but that does not mean it has impaired his intellectual capacity.

To the extent that your rationale for urging him to step aside is that Donald Trump must be beaten, your call seems still more unwarranted. There is no alternative Democratic candidate whom polls show convincingly beating the presumptive Republican nominee.

If President Biden remains the candidate and loses, The Times can say I told you so. But others will say that the most viable Democratic alternative to Mr. Trump was materially hobbled by an ill-considered rush to judgment.

 And:

So let me get this straight. A presidential candidate who is a convicted felon gives a debate performance that is often incoherent, consists primarily of obvious lies, and includes a refusal to unconditionally commit to accepting the results of the presidential election, and your editorial is filled with histrionic calls to remove the other guy who’s run the country ably and ethically for almost four years because he had an off night on the stage?

You really should have consulted with your theater critics, who can school you in the many ways the run of the show ultimately matters more than the blips in previews. Your failure to focus your outrage on Donald Trump’s truly bizarre and bewildering statements in favor of such an overwrought and shortsighted response to Mr. Biden lets the real danger to our democracy off the hook.

 And:

Those who live in a retirement complex with dozens of retired scholars, administrators and researchers in their late 80s and 90s as I do are not panicked about President Biden’s “performance” on Thursday night. Stuttering and losing one’s train of thought are hardly signs of incompetence. They are signs of loss of verbal dexterity. Period.

Younger people who are brash and opinionated and bloviate find slow word-finding horrifying. However, there is nothing more horrifying to me than impulsively judging a statesman after one bad performance.

This is the most competent and experienced leader our country has had in decades. Look at this in perspective and stop fear-mongering.

Here's the link to the whole letters column, which is pretty short, really, given how many letters they must have got on this issue.