To the Editor:
Re “Voters Wonder What’s Too Old for a President” (front page, Feb. 10):
The polls show that a majority of the U.S. voting population thinks President Biden is too old to run for re-election in 2024.
I am a thriving 81-year-old psychologist who has taught graduate psychology courses about aging. I believe that the assumption that he will be unfit to serve is based largely on our prejudices about aging.
Men and women in their 80s are a strikingly diverse group. Aging is not just about decline. Older individuals can outperform younger people on tests of intelligence that are based on accumulated knowledge and experience. Optimism and satisfaction increase with age.
While the president shows age-related signs of memory loss, research has also shown that some cognitive skills increase with age.
Let us not allow our prejudices to cloud our decision about the next president.
Alan Swope
Oakland, Calif.
The writer is emeritus professor in clinical psychology at Alliant International University.
To the Editor:
The time has come for the Democratic Party to have its “Goldwater moment,” wherein a handful of party grandees march, however reluctantly, into the Oval Office and tell President Biden that it’s time to go, much as a delegation led by Senator Barry Goldwater did in 1974, when President Nixon was told that he faced impeachment.
I don’t base my opinion primarily on age, or even competence. I’m reasonably certain that Mr. Biden is much more capable behind the scenes then he is in front of cameras, and I applaud him for all that he’s achieved in his four years in office.
But the image that he presents in public paints him as an old and feeble man who is incapable of being the head of any organization, let alone the president of the United States and the de facto leader of the Western world.
Too much is at stake in the 2024 election. For the good of the country, and for the preservation of democracy, the Democratic Party cannot allow the fate of the nation’s future to be held in such feeble hands.
It is time.
Richard J. Brenner
Miller Place, N.Y.
To the Editor:
All the stories about President Biden’s age and occasional verbal mistakes — what about Donald Trump?
I suggest simply start by putting their statements side by side. Compare all the times that Donald Trump has misspoken. Compare Mr. Biden’s ability to talk about complex issues versus Mr. Trump’s ability to do the same.
You’ve had so many stories about Joe Biden’s age — do the service of giving equal treatment to Mr. Trump’s word salads, mix-ups and the fact that he talks with the verbal capacity and the understanding of a child about complex, serious issues. Robyn Watts
To the Editor:
Re “The Challenges of an Aging President” (editorial, nytimes.com, Feb. 9):
Kudos to The Times for its call for President Biden to respond in a serious way to concerns about his age and his fitness for another term. I urge the president to go one step further: Ask the American Medical Association, or a similar organization, to appoint a panel of renowned physicians to assess the president’s mental and physical condition, with a subsequent public summary of its findings.
The president must clear the haunted air if he and we hope to avoid the threat that Donald Trump poses to the Republic.
Kent Brudney
Portland, Ore.
To the Editor:
What exactly does the editorial board expect of President Biden when it asks that he “do better” about his age?
President Biden has a history of cringe-worthy gaffes going back for decades. He is loose-tongued and always has been. Is it surprising that will continue when he is old? Knowing that The Times will focus on every gaffe he makes and blame his age rather than focus on anything else he says, isn’t it clear why he does fewer interviews?
Please do not run daily stories about his age as The Times did with Hillary Clinton’s emails. That is not fair and balanced. You turn yourself into a Republican messaging machine.
Just stop. Everyone knows he is old. It is not news or worthy of space.
Ted Eveleth
Albany, N.Y.
To the Editor:
Inexplicably, many of President Biden’s advisers, staffers, appointees and congressional allies seem to believe that many likely voters are actually buying their patently false claims that the president is consistently mentally sharp and suffers from no significant cognitive impairment or memory issues.
The report submitted by Robert Hur, the special counsel, has reinforced such longstanding concerns while further emboldening members of Team Biden, who strain to convince us that what we’re seeing and hearing simply isn’t so.
For these well-meaning — yet delusional — partisans to understand how they’re being perceived, they might want to read the old fable “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
Todd Blodgett
Mason City, Iowa
The writer has worked for the Reagan administration, the Republican National Committee and the F.B.I.
Trump’s Threat to NATO: A Green Light for Russia
To the Editor:
Re “Trump Says He Gave NATO Allies Warning: Pay In or He’d Urge Russian Aggression” (news article, nytimes.com, Feb. 11):
At a rally in South Carolina on Saturday, former President Donald Trump recalled a conversation he had with another country’s leader. That leader asked, “If we don’t pay” enough in NATO bills “and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?”
Mr. Trump’s response: “No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay.”
That’s how Mr. Trump treats our friends in Europe.
Of course we want European countries to contribute to their own defense, but it’s absurd to encourage contributions by inviting Vladimir Putin and Russia to invade those countries and “do whatever the hell” the Russians want.
Is that the kind of America we want? Because that’s what we’ll get with Mr. Trump.
Mike Barrett
Ashburn, Va.
To the Editor:
Re “NATO Weighs Isolation After Trump Outburst” (news analysis, front page, Feb. 12):
Former President Donald Trump does not understand the basis for America’s exceptionalism on the world stage. As Joseph S. Nye Jr. has written, a nation’s influence relies on both hard and soft power. Hard power refers to military and economic strength. Soft power refers to a nation’s culture, values and one more factor: alliances.
America’s dozens of alliances around the world are an integral part of U.S. national defense strategy, with NATO at the core. Mr. Trump’s short-term thinking blinds him from understanding that undermining NATO would substantially weaken America and, correspondingly, strengthen America’s enemies.
Bruce Sheiman
New York
To the Editor:
Donald Trump’s statement that he’d sic the Russians on NATO members who haven’t paid their bills is pretty rich, coming from a man who is notorious for stiffing his own creditors.
Elizabeth Block
Toronto
