SOTU: May you rest in peace

I was about to start this letter with “back in the good old days” but then I realized it likely would not make it past your first screener. So I will start it with my view that it would be a very good idea for the State of the Union Address to actually tell us at least a few things about the state of the union.

Last week instead of getting any candid assessment of the good and bad and working and not working of our great republic, we got a desperate attempt by our president to prove that he was a hearty young chap up to holding the job for another four years and a picture of the country that the least informed of his viewers surely knew was a fantasy.

There is a real value in the citizenry hearing once a year how the country is fairing and more importantly how it is not. This old senior can remember when that is what we got with the SOTU. President Biden is not the first to use it to his advantage and I have no hope that neither he nor the Republican who is likely to be his opponent in the next election will use it as it was originally designed to be used. We will simply have to look for the truth elsewhere.

BOB KLEYPAS

Coeur d’Alene