Star of the candidate forum: the moderator

Let me suggest the creation of a new governmental position: Moderator General.

And it just so happens I have a nominee: Rick Warren.

Yes, he already has a job as pastor of Saddleback Church in Orange County, but based on his performance Saturday in interviewing John McCain and Barack Obama, the young man has another talent that needs to be tapped.

Forty-eight hours after the event, I'm still overly bubbly because I feared that Warren's back-to-back interviews with the presidential aspirants would fall flat. I admired his intentions in injecting questions of faith into the presidential mix. I had wondered whether either McCain or Obama would open up in front of an evangelical pastor and his congregants. Not to mention a national TV audience. Another concern was whether Warren had the chops to nudge the two men to say more and dig deeper into their souls than we're used to hearing.

I wouldn't call it a virtuoso performance by Warren, but it was darn good. I made several notes at times that I wish he'd ask the tough follow-up question, but he didn't. He even said during the Obama hour that he could ask more about abortion but wanted to move on to other questions. I'd have preferred the added question or two, just to see how Obama would react.

Same with McCain. When Warren asked him what it meant on a daily basis to be a Christian, McCain gave the Sunday School response that it meant he was "saved and forgiven." But then he immediately switched tacks to tell an oft-told story about a prison guard who helped him when he was a captive in Vietnam.

Warren might well have asked McCain why he seemed so reluctant to elaborate on the here and now. McCain's brevity, in fact, contrasted with an extended answer to the same question from Obama.

And to continue with my nitpicking, Warren gave them some easy ones with questions about orphans or victims of human trafficking. No way to look bad in answering those questions, but they are subjects that matter to Warren, and who can blame him for giving them exposure?

So, what did Warren do well?

Just about everything else. For starters, he set the perfect tone. He was conversational, he was earnest, he was funny when appropriate, he was knowledgeable.

The idea wasn't to make anyone squirm; it was to ask questions they presumably couldn't rehearse for and to show us sides we don't see when they're talking about offshore drilling or tax increases.