When a politician announces that he is taking a "moral stand," watch out.

Guess who has more integrity: Gary Haugen, the convicted double murderer whose scheduled execution in Oregon had been scheduled for next week, or Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber, who blocked his execution?

It’s Haugen. The resident of Oregon’s death row had waived his appeals and was voluntarily submitting to his court-decreed fate when Kitzhaber stepped in, declaring his moral objections to capital punishment. But like many politicians’ objections to that other divisive social policy issue, abortion, Kitzhaber’s supposedly moral stand has more fine print than a gym membership. He didn’t commute Haugen’s sentence, or end the death sentences of the other men who have been condemned. The Governor went half way, essentially staying the executions for the term of his governorship, and pledging to seek reforms of what he called a “broken system” in 2013. Why 2013? It’s after the election, of course.

Haugen, whose life has been temporarily saved, blasted the governor in a newspaper interview. He had consented to his own execution because, he said, the process of endless appeals necessary to keep him alive were a form of cruel and unusual punishment itself. He doesn’t like the death penalty—no surprise there—but he believes that the system should have some finality, and that it is wrong to tell a prisoner he’s going to die tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, but rig the system so tomorrow never comes. He’s right, of course, especially in Oregon, where the appeals of a death sentence are allowed to go on as long as a prisoner has the stomach for them. The system itself has no integrity. Oregonians want a death penalty, but don’t want the responsibility of actually killing anyone.

This explains Kitzhaber’s cynical decision, which was hailed as courageous and principled by death penalty opponents because, you see, political double-talk still works. He wanted to  please anti–capital punishment voters by announcing that state executions were “something that I believe to be morally wrong,” without unduly alienating those who disagree. Like Herman Cain and other politicians who decry that abortion is the taking of a human life but that anyone who believes otherwise should be free to abort to their heart’s content, Kitzhaber constructed his “moral stand” so that Haugen’s life still hasn’t been saved: the next governor could end Kitzhaber’s moratorium on executions, while the ex-governor will then sadly shake his head and say, “Well, this is a tragedy, but I did what I could, and my conscience is clear.” He hasn’t done what he could, though. Gov. Kitzhaber has the power to take every man off death row permanently; there are 37 of them. That, however, would take courage. That would mean taking an unequivocal position without political wiggle room, and accepting the consequences for it. That would mean allowing his political opponents to recite the horrific crimes committed by the men Kitzhaber would be saving, and some of them are genuine monsters. (Haugen’s no prince himself: you can read about his first murder here.)  Again like the anti-abortion  hypocrites,  Oregon’s Governor refuses to take the action his supposed moral principles dictate, “because the policy of this state on capital punishment is not mine alone to decide. It is a matter for all Oregonians to decide.” But as the Washington Post’s Charles Lane pointed out, Oregon’s policy is that its governor does decide. Haugen calls Kitzhaber a coward. That’s about right.

No wonder Haugen is angry: he’s back where he was before he volunteered to die, not knowing what his sentence will be. The irony is that Gary Haugen represents one of the best arguments for a death penalty: serving a life sentence for murder, he murdered a fellow prisoner. If there is no punishment beyond life imprisonment, how does society stop people like Haugen from killing at will, with no consequences or deterrence?  Never mind; Gov. Kitzhaber isn’t interested in such details, or in the lives of the 37 death row prisoners either. His interest is only in political grandstanding.