The Texas governor told a New Hampshire crowd that doing so might be necessary to stem the flow of narcotics into America

Before this weekend, the strongest argument against putting Gov. Rick Perry in the White House came from Radley Balko. "A state government has no more awesome, complete, or solemn power than the power to execute its own citizens. If you're going to claim to loathe big government, this is one area where you ought to be more skeptical of government than any other," he wrote. But confronted with the possibility that Texas had executed an innocent man, "Perry used his own power to keep himself and his constituents ignorant, lest they begin to question whether government should have such power." And his success meant that the state's citizens were prevented from a full investigation of "a possibly historical government error."

Put another way, Perry behaved like a man who shouldn't be trusted with extreme power. As objectionable as his actions remain, however, he reminded voters and pundits of an even bigger reason to doubt his judgment in the weekend speech he gave in New Hampshire, where he mused on a step he might take if made Commander in Chief. "Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Saturday that he would consider sending U.S. troops into Mexico to combat drug-related violence and stop it from spilling into the southern United States," The Washington Post reported. "The way that we were able to stop the drug cartels in Colombia was with a coordinated effort," Perry said. "It may require our military in Mexico working in concert with them to kill these drug cartels and to keep them off of our border and to destroy their networks."