To the Journal editor:

Like many Americans, I watched the first presidential debate with disbelief at President Biden’s poor performance and the somewhat controlled manner of Donald Trump.

As a former professional musician and performer, it appeared to me that the president over prepared and was attempting race through his talking points to beat the clock. Consequently, he didn’t come across very well.

I certainly was not paying Trump a compliment by any stretch. He refused to answer many questions, opting to go off on tangents. I can’t really call them tangents because a tangent is a straight line. Trump’s factless ramblings were like leaves in the wind, all taking random paths. His performance was far beneath that someone aspiring to be president.

The third thing to make this debate a double Dana was the CNN moderators. They allowed Trump to ramble on aimlessly with seemingly no time limits. Not once did they stop him and required him to answer their questions. Maybe they felt that America needed to see his unhinged antics but it dramatically detracted from the quality of the debate. I was also disappointed that there were no questions about Trump’s Project 2025.

Many Democrats are questioning whether Mr. Biden should step aside. I just saw him speak at a rally in Raleigh, NC. He was every bit the fiery, on-point Joe Biden that we’ve come to know.

There are still nearly five months until the elections. There will also be another debate in September. We’ll see if the president can repair the damage his debate performance did.

What the debate did make plain is the differences in character between the two major parties. Democrats are always looking over their shoulders, this time, asking hard questions about the way forward. Republican, on the other hand, could not be happier with Trump’s performance, as factless and rambling as it was.

The debate did show Joe Biden as an honest, forthright leader of the free world. It also showed us that we must believe every word coming out of Trumps mouth as he talks about what his next administration would encompass.

I’ve seen at least most of the presidential debates since the Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960. They are not real debates.

They are an unnatural setting that rarely gives us an idea of just how the contenders would perform as president. That requires us to do our homework.