This stood for defending the homeland, deterring hostilities in four areas of the world, defeating two adversaries in nearly simultaneous combat operations, and being able to decisivelydefeat one of those two adversaries.
It behooves Gov. Romney to maximize the former and minimize the latter if he wants decisively to defeat the President in these mass-audience settings, and in November.
But the result was defeat, not only in Cuba itself but in the Philippines: a defeat that helped to consign Spain to a period of confusion and weakness from which it is only now decisively emerging.