WHEN YOU’VE LOST DAVID BROOKS. . .

Wars, military or economic, are measured by whether you achieved your stated objectives. By this standard the U.S. and its allies lost the war against Iran, but we were able to negotiate terms that gave only our partial surrender, which forces Iran to at least delay its victory. There have now been three big U.S. strategic defeats over the past several decades: Vietnam, Iraq and now Iran.

Two thirds of which were lost by the man Brooks determined to be worthy to be president only a few months into his first term as senator based upon the sharpness of his trouser creases.

EARLIER: “If I told you in 2008 that Barack Obama would…you’d have thought me a conspiracy theorist.”