Two days in Dublin, three in London and two names on everybody's lips: Monica Lewinsky and Harry Smith. The former is ... well, you know who she is; the latter is the visionary record collector responsible for assembling the recently re-released 1952 "Anthology of American Folk Music." The former's face is on the cover of every news magazine; the latter's name comes up in every music magazine. You might say that the only thing Monica Lewinsky and the late Harry Smith have in common is that they both have soft spots for a particular American icon: the ambitious Southerner. Which may not sound like much, but those of us with similar soft spots know how many evenings can be passed, how many books can be read, how many letters can be written talking up the virtues and vices of these twang-talking American dreamers who are so charismatic they cast even the most cold-hearted Yankee under their spell. This figure is always changing faces. Sometimes he looks like President Clinton. Listening to the voices recorded in the 1920s and '30s on Smith's "Anthology," you might recognize him as Dock Boggs. Of course, the girls screamed the loudest when his name was Elvis Presley.

I'm not blaming Lewinsky for all the ribbing my American accent got me from Irish cab drivers last week. Because, like her, I once fell for the president. A president who is often compared to Elvis, a president Secret Service agents call Elvis, a president whose Little Elvis is the part of him I dread the most. Once the country gave up on Clinton (which was about six days into his presidency), he required much defense. Years and years as an Elvis fan was training enough. Anyone who knows all the words to "Jailhouse Rock" learned long before the '93 inaugural how to stand up to bad jokes about greasy food and racist slurs against non-Northern accents. And while all the smartass comics were looking at pictures of Lewinsky and bemoaning that the leader of the free world couldn't score a better class of tail, anyone who's seen the wedding photos of the day the King married his Queen could see a little Priscilla in Lewinsky's big black hair.

Still, I can't help rewriting a Beck lyric to evoke the dullest State of the Union Address of Clinton's presidency: "I'm a bureaucrat baby, so why don't you blow me?" What was that speech? Its concerns were so businesslike it may as well have been the Kansas-flat ramble Bob Dole would have delivered if he'd won the election last year. Where was our biblical charmer? Our Arkansas poet? Where the hell was Elvis? I'm as thrilled as the next girl the deficit's gone down. I realize that fact might mean real things to real people. But a Clinton speech isn't supposed to be a tax seminar. It's supposed to be a concert. I still have one of the songs from last year's address stuck in my head. He spoke of racial healing as if it were possible. He invoked Isaiah, asking us all to become something as weird and wonderful as "repairers of the breech." All I am this year is less worried about the fate of Social Security, which is comforting, not inspiring. This new no-nonsense was all musically reenforced during one of the president's Illinois stops the next day, where the soundtrack to an appearance was the unfortunate Presley motto "Taking Care of Business."

Like I said, I'm not angry at Lewinsky. I'm not even angry at Clinton -- I had his number sex-wise ages ago. And I'm certainly not self-hating enough to loathe the press. I'm angry at America, or whoever those Americans are who are answering opinion polls. You know, the polls that now tell us that the president's approval ratings have never been higher. Where were you approvers a few weeks ago when Clinton presided over the longest and most intelligent press conference of his term, the one in which he spoke eloquently of hopes and dreams while at the same time responding deftly to terrifically precise questions about the diplomatic relations between Turkey and Greece? Where were you when he addressed the nation with Old Testament outrage and New Testament sorrow after the Oklahoma City bombing? And where were you last fall, my fellow music fans, when he appeared on VH1 speaking with so much feeling for real American achievement, showing us his old Ray Charles albums and teenage home movies in which he jitterbugs to something new called rock 'n' roll? You like him now? You like him with his tail between his legs? You like him taking care of business?

N E X T_P A G E | America's rules