INSULT TO INJURY: BLACK VELVET AND A LITTLE BOY SMILE: PART TWO -- AMERICA NEEDS ELVIS

"Before Elvis, there was nothing."

-- John Lennon

As Ronald Reagan's second term neared its end, there was open discussion among the talking heads of television's political punditry about the possibility of repealing the 22nd amendment to the Constitution.

You remember good ol' 22.

It was the amendment proposed in 1947 and ratified in '51 in response to FDR's seemingly endless reign in the Oval Office. It limited the number of years that a person could serve as our nation's chief executive.

By the terms of the amendment, Mr. Reagan was limited to eight years as president. And as his second term neared its end, many were questioning, with knitted brows, the wisdom of having such an amendment etched in stone. Simply put, many didn't want to see him go.

Despite his age and the initial signs of his emerging Alzheimer's Disease, Ronald Reagan remained immensely popular with the electorate, mostly because he had managed to help restore America's vision of itself. It was to many a welcome restoration.

Thanks to the 1960s, with its spirit of rebellion and its embracing of the counterculture, much of the youthful innocence the country had once enjoyed was, if not gone, at least diminished. What the poet W.B. Yeats had seen in Europe during World War I was becoming true of our nation 50 years later. Things were falling apart. The center was not holding. The best lacked all conviction and the worst were full of passionate intensity. It was a time of innocence lost, innocence drowned.

In his eight years in the White House, Ronald Reagan helped restore that lost vision. Don't ask me how. If I knew how, I'd be president and then we'd really be in a heap of trouble. And for that matter, it's not really important how Reagan did it. What matters is that he did it. And with his leaving office, something or someone was needed to fill the void.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, would slouch toward middle America to be born? Or should we say "reborn," for the tabloids in 1988 said it all: Elvis is Alive!

In 1979, two years after Elvis' death, the celebrated method actor Marlon Brando -- himself a rather stunning example of human corpulence and incredible excesses -- ridiculed Elvis in an interview with Playboy magazine. Said Brando:

"Elvis Presley -- bloated, over the hill, adolescent entertainer -- had nothing to do with excellence, just myth."

As if that were an insult.

What Brando, knee-deep and wallowing in his own talent and genius, seemed to forget was that excellence, no matter how shining, fades over time. Myth, however, lives on forever.

Life has changed dramatically in the 20-plus years since Elvis Presley died of a drug-induced heart attack while sitting on a toilet in his Memphis mansion, Graceland.

Twenty years ago no one had heard of Bill Clinton and Monica was still a toddler.

Twenty years ago Bill Gates was just a geeky little computer nerd that everybody wanted to beat up instead of a geeky little billionaire who has more money than God and who everybody still wants to beat up.

Twenty years ago no one had ever heard of AIDS. Twenty years ago the Berlin Wall still stood. Twenty years ago there was no John Paul II. There hadn't even been a John Paul I.

Twenty years ago, we did not even know who Michael Jordan was. And we had not had to suffer watching him retire -- twice.

Twenty years ago, there was no Jerry Springer Show.

One thing that has remained constant in that time -- Elvis. In fact, if anything he has become even more important in the time since his death. He reputation has grown larger than his waistline, wider than his sideburns, brighter than his belt buckle.

We have held on to Elvis not because of his talent, but because he is the personification of our hopes and our dreams, the American Dream made flesh.

Born dirt poor, he managed to pull himself up by his bootstraps and become more than a mere celebrity -- a king. And yet he never lost that country-boy innocence with his "aw-shucks" smile and his excruciating polite ways.

He never filled his kitchen with delicacies so fancy that we cannot even pronounce their names, but he kept it stocked with brownies and meatloaf and all the fixin's for peanut butter and banana sandwiches.

Best of all, he loved his mama.

And now, a confession: I don't even particularly like Elvis. His early music was fairly good, though others were a lot better. His later stuff was pretty bad. His movies were just painful. And Graceland? Well, Graceland is tacky.

But Elvis -- not the man, but the myth -- must stay alive lest we return to the primordial chaos. In a day when Kenneth Starr and Bill Clinton are men of the year, who else do we have to believe in?

~Jeffrey Jackson is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.