If you ever doubt that this is a great, great country, consider the story of Brent Mendenhall.

A couple of years ago, he was just another poor sap busting his hump in his family's construction business in Missouri, a guy you'd pick out of a crowd only if everyone else in the crowd suddenly keeled over.

Now he's on with Jay Leno and doing walk-ons in movies and corporate appearances for five grand a pop, all because of a freak genetic blip, which is that he looks like the president of the United States.

"I hate to say it," laughs Mendenhall of his gig as a George W. Bush impersonator, "but it beats having to work for a living."

"You come out of obscurity, and all of a sudden you're the Leader of the Free World," says Mendenhall's manager, Pat Rick.

Oh, yes, only in America does a kid from the sticks of Missouri grow up to be a presidential impersonator and have people throw money at him.

Mendenhall's peculiar success story began four years ago at a wedding, when the sister of the bride, who was from Texas, turned to him and said: "You sure look like George Bush."

If this was supposed to make Mendenhall feel good, it failed miserably.

In fact, he started thinking: Where does this horrible woman get off? Because George Herbert Walker Bush, he knew, was an old wrinkled guy in his 80s or whatever. And Mendenhall, heck, he was only in his late 40s and still thought of himself as studly.

It turned out the bride's sister was talking about George W. Bush, the governor of Texas and the ex-prez's son.

Mendenhall found a picture of the guv and, sure enough, it appeared the two could have been separated at birth, although the governor was an inch or two taller.

Anyway, a year later, Bush the Younger was making a serious bid for the presidency. And more and more people were telling Mendenhall he was a dead ringer for the GOP candidate.

So Mendenhall started to think about a career switch. He called a guy who worked as a Bill Clinton impersonator under the stage name of Counterfeit Bill, who turned out to be Pat Rick.

Rick was doing a gig in Texas with a Hillary Clinton lookalike for a meeting of cellular-pager manufacturers. He invited Mendenhall to join him. Mendenhall did a walk-on as George W. Bush, got a few laughs, got a nice hand, and promptly said "I'm outta here" to the construction biz.

"He was hooked," recalled Rick, who became his business manager soon after. "You gotta be a little hammy to be any good at this ... and he was."

When Bush was officially elected president (of course, some people would still argue with that word "officially"), Mendenhall's new career took off.

In addition to appearing with Leno, he's been on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central, The X-Files, JAG and Live With Regis and Kelly, and is scheduled to do an episode of The Weakest Link with other celebrity lookalikes.

He also plays the president in the new movie Life or Something Like It, starring Angelina Jolie.

But it's his work at corporate outings, trade shows and business conventions -- four to six gigs a month -- that brings in the dough, anywhere from $3,500 to $5,000 per appearance.

And this "work" is not exactly like breaking rocks in the hot sun.

Basically, a typical gig goes like this: The crowd is told that "a very special guest" will be arriving in a few moments. Then, as the lights go down and "Hail to the Chief" blares over the sound system, Mendenhall shows up surrounded by a fake Secret Service detail in suits and shades, with those little transmitters in each ear.

Then he gives a quick, funny, State of the Union-like speech, often mangling the pronunciation of whatever town he's in to establish his character. And then he's gone, because as Pat Rick says: "The president doesn't hang around. He breezes in and breezes out."

When I reached Mendenhall the other day in Indianapolis, where he was doing a gig for the local Republican party, I asked him whether he also sounded like the commander-in-chief.

"They say my administration is going to be controlled by powerful interests," he said in a thin, reedy voice. "Just give me a break, and leave my mother out of this."

As impressions go, it was, well, strictly OK. You wouldn't hand the phone to someone and shout: "Martha, you gotta hear this guy!" But it wasn't terrible, either.

"[Bush's] voice is relatively difficult to imitate because there's really nothing [distinguishing] about it," Mendenhall said quickly. "It's just a typical Midwestern accent. He doesn't really have a Texas drawl or anything."

Besides, when you look as much like the president as Mendenhall does, the voice isn't that important.

Two years ago, Mendenhall finally got to meet George W. Bush at a public TV station in Iowa, where the then-Texas governor had just finished participating in a presidential campaign debate. If Bush was bowled over by the uncanny resemblance between the two men, he sure hid it well.

"We just chatted and laughed a little bit," says Mendenhall. "I wish I had a great line for you about something he said. But I don't."

That's OK. I can imagine what Bush was probably thinking: This is what I have to deal with if I win the election?