Political analysts seem divided over whether Gov. Perry's pronounced zeal for capital punishment will help or hurt him on the national stage. Just this past weekend, for example, Juana Summers at Politico wrote a piece suggesting that the death penalty won't be a big deal for Perry (or anyone else) on the campaign trail leading up to the 2012 election. That may or may not be true at the surface level of political theater. But either way it doesn't mean that the candidate's upcoming decisions on capital punishment, placed properly into the context of Texas' long and notorious history with the death penalty, aren't a vital topic to explore now that Labor Day has come and gone.

To understand why this is a worthwhile endeavor, notwithstanding what the pundits and spinmeisters are saying about the public's interest in capital punishment as a stump issue, it's useful to go back 15 years or so ago in Texas history. There was an awful lot we all might have learned early on about the governing styles and intellectual rigor of then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush and his Legal Counsel Alberto Gonzales had folks around the country paid more attention in the 1990s to the grossly negligent way in which the pair evaluated clemency petitions from death row inmates.

With the benefit of hindsight, for example, one could reasonably argue that the pair's sloppy legal reasoning, disregard for fundamental legal principles, and contempt for honest evaluation of evidence about the Texas prisoners foreshadowed the subsequent torture memos and other low moments of the Bush presidency. If you don't believe me, if you think I am exaggerating the links and patterns here, please take a few minutes to read Alan Berlow's landmark piece, The Texas Clemency Memos, which appeared in the July/August 2003 issue of The Atlantic Magazine.

Likewise, surely, there are important lessons to be gleaned these days by the way in which candidate Perry handles the pending Buck, Swearingen and Skinner cases. They are all different as a matter of fact and law. But their resolution over the next few weeks and months will tell Gov Perry's new national audience a great deal about where he stands on matters of law and justice, pride and prejudice, and the intersection of law and science. The governor doesn't believe in the science of Evolution? He doesn't believe in the science of global warming? How about science of medicine? How about the science of DNA? How about the science of law?

At a time when several states are moving away from the death penalty as a costly, uncertain experiment, and with a chorus of critics still pressing the governor to better explain his dubious handling of the aforementioned Willingham case, Perry now will have to justify his capital decisions more fully than he ever has before. He'll have to convince death penalty opponents and staunch advocates of capital punishment that he is willing and able to follow the rule of law even if it takes him to a place he doesn't necessarily want to go; a place where some condemned prisoners aren't executed as quickly as the Texas justice system wants them to be-- or aren't executed at all.