Regarding David Von Drehle’s March 8 op-ed, “An amped-up Biden plays the age-old hits”:
If there is one thing I wish Mr. Biden had done, it would have been to offer a strong rebuke to former president Donald Trump’s recent characterization of the United States as “a Third World country.” Words matter. Mr. Biden made that perfectly clear Thursday. Yes, he may be old. But No. 46 showed the country he still knows how to play hardball. Batter up.
Denny Freidenrich, Laguna Beach, Calif.
The president held a pep rally last Thursday instead of giving the nation a clear report on the State of the Union. It seemed more like a campaign kickoff. He was aggressive, and he focused on all the Democratic talking points. He did prove he is not too old to stand up there and criticize anyone who doesn’t agree with him.
What was missing was a plan for how we will deal with the mounting debt. I got that he wants to raise taxes, but his plan is vague. The biggest problem I have with President Biden and his party is that they are not honest with citizens about how the debt and rising payments limit our options as a country. The national debt is a real problem, and they have no plan to deal with it.
Jim Hogan, Mineral, Va.
How telling it was that the Republican response to President Biden’s State of the Union speech came from a woman in a kitchen.
Sen. Katie Boyd Britt (R-Ala.) said she knows “which choice our children deserve — and the choice the Republican Party is fighting for.”
Well, I, for one, as a woman and the mother of a childbearing woman, do not believe American women or children, especially girls, “deserve” to go back to the kitchen — or to be forced into pregnancy. And I say so as a professional working woman who always made sure to be home to put dinner on the table so our family could eat together. It was my choice to do so, a choice that was not dictated by a political party interested in taking my decision-making power away from me.
Camille Grosdidier, Washington
It is interesting that expelled Republican congressman George Santos (N.Y.) was in attendance at the State of the Union address. That same day, he announced his desire to return to the political arena, filing paperwork to run for Congress a second time. Perhaps former president Donald Trump should entertain the notion of having Mr. Santos as his running mate. Set aside talk of cognitive tests and bring on the lie detectors.
Jerry McDermott, Largo, Fla.
I very much enjoyed reading David Von Drehle’s analysis of the president’s speech. What was of particular importance to me was his understanding of the occasional hesitancy and gaffes in President Biden’s aggressive and fiery speech. As almost everyone knows, Mr. Biden grew up as a stutterer.
It is also well known, at least within the clinical world, that a person with such an impediment can overcome it to a large degree with repeated practice in speaking slowly and distinctly. One of the brightest students I knew in graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania was also a stutterer. This did not prevent him from earning his PhD, nor from getting an excellent position after his degree.
The speech problem can reappear when the speaker talks highly emotionally and with the need to get the words out rapidly. The intense speech by the president presented such a problem. It did not, however, detract from the intelligent and significant messages of his talk. We would all be better off if we focused less on the stuttering that occasionally gets in Mr. Biden’s way and more on the substance of his momentous address.
Robert J. Seidel, Fairfax
