Let W. Be W.

By now, you know that they caught President Bush on an open mic in a candid chat with Tony Blair at the G8 summit in St. Petersburg on Monday. I listened to the audio and read a transcript. My take? Let W. be W.

Bush's unplugged -- er, plugged -- comments reminded me for the first time in a while of the guy I voted for twice. The Bush we came to know as W., not the Bush who morphed into a capital-P President.

I'm talking about the W. who made Al Gore and John Kerry look like a couple of blow-dried, finger-to-the-wind stiffs. A guy who is centered. A fellow with values. A man whose heart you know to be in the right place even when he's in the wrong. Someone you'd like to have a beer with. Remember, after eight years of Bill Clinton, it was time for a plain-talkin' 'Merican -- and never more so than when the forces of evil reared their heads on 9/11.

So now, I'd like to see more of the real W. Let him go with his gut, and do more telling it like it is. That's certainly what he was doing with Tony Blair. The exchange couldn't help but humanize him.

As the G8 luncheon, W. said he intended to be brief and explained why:

"I'm not going to talk too damn long like the rest of them. Some of these guys talk too long."

Like a traveling businessman, W. at the G8 was anxious to get home:

"Gotta go home. Got something to do tonight. Go to the airport, get on the airplane and go home."

W. at G8 on Pepsi vs. Coke:

"No, Diet Coke, Diet Coke."

And W. didn't want to be the last one left at the G8 party:

"Blair, what are you doing, you leaving?"

While he was hanging with Blair, we learned that W. knows what it's like to get the bad tie on Christmas day:

"Thanks for the sweater. It's awfully thoughtful of you. ... I know you picked it out yourself," Bush joked. (Blair's response, "Oh, absolutely, in fact I knitted it!" doesn't reflect too poorly on his sense of humor, either.)

On more substantive matters, W. recognized the limited value of the United Nations:

"What about Kofi? That seems odd. I don't like the sequence of it. His attitude is basically cease-fire, and [then] everything else happens. You know what I'm saying?"

And, most importantly, W. understands who is to blame and where a solution lies:

"See, the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this s--t, and it's over."

W. also has a plan:

"I felt like telling Kofi to get on the phone with Assad and make something happen. We're not blaming Israel. We're not blaming the Lebanese government."

It's too bad that at that point, Blair noticed the microphone and turned it off.

What has grabbed most of the attention of those struck by W.'s candor is that in a private conversation with a buddy he was recorded using the s-word. I don't like it either, but not because I'm a prude.

What I mind is that were I to repeat what he said on my radio show, my employer and I could be on the receiving end of a $325,000 fine due to legislation that Congress passed, and Bush signed into law. That's the net effect of Janet Jackson's breast popping out during the halftime show of the Super Bowl in February of 2004. The FCC fined CBS $550,000 for that incident, which was the then maximum amount of $27,500 multiplied by 20 affiliates owned by the network.

We don't need the government to levy fines like that. The answer is to let the market decide. The nation's 13,000 radio stations and 1,700 TV stations should police themselves, and if listeners and viewers don't like how they do it, they can exercise the ultimate control by turning the dial.

The president said the increase in fines would "make television and radio more family-friendly."

But he was wrong. A fine of $325,000 for a one-time utterance is ridiculous. And, in this case, it actually prevents broadcasters from replaying the president's G8 remarks in full -- denying W. some of the best press he's likely to get all year.

As a matter of fact, if I had W.'s ear, I would tell it to him in language he'd understand. I'd just tell him it's bullshit.