Yes, the death penalty has been rendered morally problematic by disclosures of prosecutorial misconduct and state indifference to the right of indigent defendants to a fair trial, and by DNA testing that has established the innocence of prisoners on death row. But 80 percent of the American people support the death penalty, and they will resent the intimation that they are lacking in decency. They will throw the names of serial killers, like Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy, back at you. These monsters are the ones lacking in morality, not us, most Americans will still say, even after you put before them what we have recently learned about the death penalty's administration. Whether the criminal-justice system is a gauntlet of human-rights violations or not, they want social vengeance on what they regard as contemptible scum deserving of neither justice nor compassion.

People resent the implied moral superiority of death-penalty opponents. "If you had my exquisite scruples," the opponents all but say, "you would believe as I do." That is what bugs people about holier-than-thou politicians like Mario Cuomo and Michael Dukakis. The only thing worse than a politician who is more corrupt than regular citizens is one who is insufferably better. The presidency is not a ministry, as you'll quickly discover if you presume to ask more than three-quarters of the country to reconsider their support of death for death -- the formula of justice they apply to murder with biblical sanction.

We have long since accepted that judges and juries are fallible, that police and prosecutors will bend the rules to win convictions, that innocent men might be put to death because of fallibility and prosecutorial zeal -- or we would believe these things if we bothered to think about them. In supporting the death penalty we act according to the principle that it is better for a few innocent men die than for us to allow many guilty men to escape the punishment of an eye for an eye. Mr./Ms. President, your lecture from the bully pulpit would only remind us of the details and degrees of a principle we have already accepted, or would have if we worried the question; and degrees of fallibility don't signify to those who have already conceded the principle. Respect the settled opinion of the people and don't join this quixotic crusade. There are steps you can take short of political immolation that will align you on the side of reform, like providing federal funds, if necessary, to subsidize lawyers defending indigent clients on trial for murder. Mend it -- the flaws in the administration of the death penalty -- don't end it.