This afternoon, President Bush will address Americans and urge them to support his gazillion dollar economic bailout.

It’s a strange decision.

The latest survey shows that nineteen per cent of Americans approve of Bush’s efforts as president. On economic management, the figure drops to seventeen per cent.

To put that in perspective, eighteen per cent of Americans think that the sun revolves around the Earth. (If you were wondering, it doesn’t.)

Sixty-four per cent of people in the USA feel that aliens have made contact with humanity, fifty per cent think that UFOs regularly abduct people, and thirty-seven per cent think the Little Green Men are already in touch with the White House.

A third believe in ghosts, twenty-five per cent in reincarnation and twenty-four per cent in witches.

In fact, Americans (twenty per cent) are more convinced that communication with the dead is possible than that Bush is doing a good job; they consider it more likely (nineteen per cent) that Bigfoot will be discovered than that W will successfully steward their economy.

In other words, there’s whacked out people across the USA, folks prepared to swallow the most preposterous nonsense — but they draw the line at George Bush. The Republicans would do better to find a witch prepared to speak up for their bailout.

All this raises the question: what kind of flakes are the nineteen per cent of Bush believers?

Well, there’s Greg Sheridan at The Australian:

Let me be the first to offer a bold, revisionist view. George W. Bush may well be judged, ultimately, a great president, especially in foreign policy, especially in the war on terror.

To be fair, Sheridan thinks that a recognition of Bush’s true greatness might take twenty or thirty years. Perhaps by then Bigfoot will be president.