Yes, President Joe Biden put in a poor speaking performance in the presidential candidates debate last week. But I say he still won the debate.
He won the debate because he answered the questions. And his answers were appropriate with facts and other information that he presented.
Meanwhile, Donald J. Trump provided lies, slander, misrepresentations and baseless opinions while rarely giving an appropriate answer to the question that was asked.
For me, the election-day choice will be simple: Which candidate would I prefer to trust with my life? That really is the question that all of us should ask when we are voting.
Because that really is what we actually are doing. We are putting our lives and our nation in the hands of the leadership presented by that person and his or her team of advisers.
A year ago I wrote that the Democratic Party should have been looking to a younger candidate, and I presented a list of seven or eight good choices. Then last October, I cited the party’s national hierarchy for its failure to be more open to other candidates. Instead, I believe top party members let it be known that anyone challenging Biden would suffer serious retribution.
I also wrote a commentary stating that an age limit should be enacted for presidential candidates because I believe we should be selecting candidates younger than both Biden and Trump.
I had been wishing that Biden would bow out and give his support to someone younger. But he didn’t. And no one younger has stepped forward to become a serious contender.
Now, since Biden is the presumptive Democratic candidate, I’ll provide some minor bits of parallel between his position as president and mine as a columnist.
First, there is the parallel of age. I am 82 and will turn 83 nearly three months before Biden turns 82.
Next, readers of my commentaries have noted how easy to read and coherent they are, and I have received compliments on my research and documenting of sources. But if I had to speak fluently about those issues, especially without notes or knowing in advance on which issues I will be quizzed, I’d probably stammer more than President Biden did.
I probably could give good answers only on the subject of the very last commentary I wrote during the previous week or two.
Also, I take days and sometimes weeks to develop a particular column — because of the time I spent copying articles and information from the internet into my laptop files.
President Biden, however, has sources immediately available that are many times better — a team of world-wise advisers and experts on call round the clock. It’s not the man alone we put in the White House, but the team he brings with him.
Think about that. Would you prefer to have such a team as the one selected by Biden, or one that Trump would assemble?
In addition, perhaps the most important issue is judgment. Good judgment is what we really want in a president — more than anything else. And President Biden generally has displayed a lifetime of good judgment.
Is anyone willing to say the same about Donald Trump?
And finally, which of the two would you prefer to be filling the next vacancies on the Supreme Court?
Isn’t our voting choice all about the important domestic and world decisions the president must make — and which of the two we would prefer making those decisions?
And doesn’t it go back to what mothers told us when we were young — that actions speak louder than words?
Darrell Berkheimer is a retired journalist whose career spans nearly 60 years. He was city editor and news editor at The Daily Herald, Provo, during the 1970s and ’80s. He also filled newspaper editor positions in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Texas and New Mexico, and is the author of several essays books. Contact him at [email protected].