There was a good political debate this week

It wasn’t this one.

The eight Democratic White House contenders campaigned across South Carolina on Friday after a first debate that produced no winners or losers but gave some lesser-known candidates a share of the national spotlight.

After months of heavy media attention on favorites Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards, the debate allowed the rest of the crowded Democratic field to seize the microphone and lay out views on issues like Iraq and health care.

“What it did was show Americans there are more than three people in this race,” said South Carolina state Rep. Jerry Govan of Orangeburg, a supporter of Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware.

It also showed that all Democratic candidates support, protect and defend abortion.

There’s one thing all of the Democratic candidates seeking the party’s nomination for president have in common — they all strongly support abortion. The candidates put those pro-abortion views on display last night in the first primary presidential debate of the election season.

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards (led) off the debate with the first question on abortion issues going to him.

He said he disagreed with the Supreme Court’s ruling upholding a national ban on partial-birth abortions and promised, if elected, to appoint justices to the Supreme Court who would promote abortion on the bench.

In turn, all the other candidates weighed with the promise of fidelity to the abortion movement. 

However, there was this other, little heard-of debate this week between presidential candidates Sen. Sam Brownback and Sen. Christopher Dodd at Boston College. I caught some of it live online, and it was refreshingly civil and charitable.

Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas may be Mitt Romney’s worst nightmare in the Republican race for president. Brownback, 51, is a Christian conservative with long-held convictions and he’s willing to challenge his own party to prove it cares a lot more about the poor – and people in prisons – than it usually shows.
 
    Take some of Brownback’s straight-from-the-heart remarks during a Monday forum on faith and public policy at Boston College. He joined Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) – another presidential longshot who also should wear well with voters the more they get to know him.
 
    Dodd said his Democrats need to talk more openly about faith. And when moderator Tim Russert asked Brownback if the GOP seems more tuned to the strictures of the Ten Commandments than to the “do unto others” spirit of the Sermon on the Mount, Brownback said, “I think there’s some validity to that.”

 “The parable of Lazarus haunts me,” he said, recalling the tale of a rich man who refuses to give even his table scraps to a beggar. He goes to hell and is left to implore the beggar Lazarus, who has risen to heaven, to dip his finger in water and touch the rich man’s burning lips. “Well,” said Brownback, to appreciative laughter, “We (the GOP) are the rich guy and I don’t like how this story ends.”
 
    So, he said, “Let us go in and help the poor, and then we lift ourselves up.” A long-time pro-lifer who defines embryos as “our youngest humans,” Brownback still reminded that society’s responsibility doesn’t stop at a child’s birth. “It extends to Darfur (where he has helped relief efforts), to children in poverty, to men in prison.”

Conservatives who are skeptical of the campaign conversions of Romney and Rudy Giuliani may see Brownback as a true champion of their causes. Before Romney counts too much on passing John McCain, he’d better check for Brownback in his rear-view. A hard-right conservative the Kansan may be. But he’s hard right with a heart.
 
    The Boston College event was a model of what a good presidential forum can be. Dodd and Brownback didn’t talk over each other or insult the other man’s intelligence. When they differed, they did so with passion but respect.

This is what we want in our leaders, and what we should expect.

Both men were inspirational, Dodd talking of his Peace Corps experience and Brownback challenging students to do community service, whatever their leanings.
 
     “If you don’t follow your dream, somebody else gets hurt,” he said, explaining that if Dodd hadn’t followed his Peace Corps dream years ago, some Latin Americans would have been denied his help. “So find your dream, follow your head, follow your heart,” Brownback said. “And change the world.”

We want to see more debates like this going forward. It set the bar higher, where it belongs.