In William Cooper’s Another Viewpoint essay, “A Democrat’s case for Ron DeSantis,” he argues that President Biden isn’t competent to be president.
He points to Biden’s onstage fall at the Air Force Academy as an example of his declining physical and mental capacities. What Cooper doesn’t mention, perhaps because it didn’t fit his article’s premise, is that Biden spoke to students for 30 minutes, then spent nearly two hours shaking hands with each student before he unfortunately tripped over a black sandbag on stage. When he got up, he reportedly jogged to his motorcade.
Cooper calls DeSantis competent to be president. He also described him as boring, stiff, mean, as likable as a “stinky sock” and on the wrong side of numerous issues. Cooper says a president should be very good at dealing with global challenges and that DeSantis “skillfully” runs his state. He doesn’t note that DeSantis started an acrimonious war with Florida’s largest employer, Disney, after it criticized the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill championed by the governor.
Is this thin-skinned man up to dealing competently with global challenges when he can’t deal competently with Disney?
William Butte, Deerfield Beach
‘Competence’ isn’t enough
Cooper’s essay makes the valid point that Donald Trump’s presidency was a sorry display of incompetence bolstered by dishonesty.
We surely need a president who knows what he’s doing and appoints people with skill and integrity to do their jobs for the good of the country. Leaving aside Cooper’s dismissal of President Biden for his supposed physical and mental decline (which are by no means at the level where his judgment or character are impaired), he presents us with the competence of Ron DeSantis.
He is competent if measured by an ability to wrangle a pliant legislature to enact laws which solve only fabulist problems while woefully neglecting pressing issues: housing, insurance and environmental hazards.
We can do better than competence measured by Ivy League degrees and a demagogic proclivity to demonize ideas and people who differ in views or lifestyles. A competent book banner is not suited to leading a democratic republic.
Stephen Wertheimer, Boca Raton
A litmus test of competence
William Cooper could not be more wrong. It’s hard to know where to begin.
How about his major assertion that domestic issues matter less than global issues when assessing a presidential candidate’s potential competence? His statement that “America’s domestic squabbles just don’t mean as much as they used to” is outrageous. It is DeSantis’ attacks on domestic rights that make him so dangerous and not competent to lead the country.
On the so-called litmus test by which Cooper claims to judge competency, DeSantis fails miserably. Perhaps foremost are Cooper’s kudos for DeSantis “effectively achieving his objectives in Florida” where his goals include decimating women’s rights (on abortion), quashing free speech (Disney), crushing LGBTQ rights, restricting school library books, trampling on people of color by eliminating valuable Advance Placement classes, his removal of the Tampa state attorney for not agreeing with him, and his campaign against “wokeness,” whatever that is.
Just as egregious is Cooper’s claim that the governor’s Navy service in Iraq, where he was a JAG lawyer and advisor and never saw a moment of combat, is somehow valuable in a test of competency. Just because DeSantis has bludgeoned his agenda through a hand-picked compliant legislature and has a supportive Supreme Court hardly makes him competent — any more than a successful arsonist should be praised for his skill in setting fires.
Harvey Starin, Boca Raton
Sandbagging Biden
Cooper’s criticism of President Biden seems based on his age and an accidental fall over a sandbag he didn’t notice. Apparently, all of Biden’s legislative accomplishments and his rallying our allies to defend Ukraine somehow don’t qualify as competence.
He calls Trump a danger to democracy, but he’s apparently unbothered by DeSantis’ use of government power to retaliate against critics exercising their constitutional right of free speech. DeSantis is an unprincipled power abuser who does not deserve our support.
Richard Goetz, Delray Beach