I never thought I’d say that. But the CBS veteran finally let a question about abortion–and the judiciary–into a presidential debate. It wasn’t a particularly good question, seeming crafted like a gotcha:

Senator McCain, you believe Roe v. Wade should be overturned. Senator Obama, you believe it shouldn’t. Could either of you ever nominate someone to the Supreme Court who disagrees with you on this issue?

But at least it gave McCain an opportunity to talk both about saving lives, and about saving the Constitution. How’d he do? Pretty well on the judiciary, and very well indeed on the issue of life, I think.

Given the fact that “litmus tests” are unpopular–a defect in public opinion I tried to correct about three years ago–McCain probably did the right thing to announce that he would not use any. There is no doubt he believes this too, and he repeated his proud boast that he had voted for the confirmation of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. If he is only a senator for the next four years and Obama is president, he will have to make good on this by voting for Obama’s nominees, since “elections have consequences,” as McCain said last night. But it enabled him to excoriate Obama for voting against John Roberts and Samuel Alito. And if he becomes president, he is in a strong position to argue over the heads of senators, to the American people, that his judicial nominees deserve confirmation if they are “qualified”–as they surely will be.

What are those qualifications? McCain said, “I will find the best people in the world–in the United States of America who have a history of strict adherence to the Constitution. And not legislating from the bench.” That was good. Schieffer then pressed McCain:

SCHIEFFER: But even if it was someone–even someone who had a history of being for abortion rights, you would consider them?

MCCAIN: I would consider anyone in their qualifications. I do not believe that someone who has supported Roe v. Wade that would be part of those qualifications. But I certainly would not impose any litmus test.

Had McCain just slipped in a litmus test, in the breath just before his repeated disavowal? You could certainly understand him that way. But do you really think pro-life President John McCain would ever nominate someone to the Supreme Court who has a “history of being for abortion rights,” as Schieffer put it, or is known to have “supported Roe v. Wade,” as McCain put it? For heaven’s sake, he thinks Roe was “a bad decision,” and declared himself devoted to “the rights of the unborn.” Certainly a pro-abortion jurist or legal scholar would have to be pretty covert about it to get himself nominated by John McCain. (Then again, think of Kennedy and Souter, and remember we’ll have to stay alert even with McCain in the White House!)

The Constitution matters. The judiciary matters. This election matters. Life matters! The first to answer Schieffer on this round, McCain had set the standard.

How did Obama meet it? He said, “Well, I think it’s true that we shouldn’t apply a strict litmus test and the most important thing in any judge is their capacity to provide fairness and justice to the American people.” Not “adherence to the Constitution,” mind you, let alone “strict adherence,” and no disavowal of “legislating from the bench.” And if you believe his disavowal of a Roe litmus test, you’ve been bamboozled. His campaign’s website declares he “will make preserving women’s rights under Roe v. Wade a priority as President.”

This former lecturer on constitutional law then declared that “the Constitution has a right to privacy in it” comparable to “our First Amendment rights” that shouldn’t be “subject to popular vote.” I’d love to hear someone ask Obama to explain where that right to privacy appears in the Constitution, and get him sputtering about penumbras and emanations, or perhaps launching a disquisition on “substantive due process,” the legal fiction that gave us Roger Taney’s protection of slavery in the Dred Scott case. I don’t expect McCain to press this in the confines of a debate, but it’s worth noting how little interest the working press have in asking Obama about this.

Then, as quickly as he could, Barack Obama changed the subject to . . . Lily Ledbetter’s sad tale of a lost lawsuit against her employer! This should tell us something. Obama didn’t want to talk about his extreme record on abortion. But McCain was not to be diverted into Ledbetter-land by Obama. He pressed Obama (at last!) about his opposition in the Illinois state senate to a bill that would have saved the lives of the just-born victims of an attempted abortion, and Obama filibustered away the remaining time in this segment by prevaricating about that disgraceful episode in his career. Prevaricating? What am I saying? From everything we know, we can simply say he lied about it.

In the few seconds remaining to him, McCain tagged Obama for his “extreme pro-abortion position” and (this is where he said what I noted above) referred loud and clear to “the rights of the unborn.” And then Schieffer moved them on to education.

This whole exchange was a good moment for John McCain. Was he perfect in his couching of the arguments? No. But any time the contrast can be drawn on these issues–on the Constitution, on the judiciary’s war on democratic self-government, and on the right to life–the conservative cause and the conservative candidate benefit from it.

McCain drew that contrast. Obama clearly wanted to be somewhere else–anywhere else. Here, for several minutes, it was a good night for the good fight.