Though democracy is ostensibly the opposite of monarchy, the mass culture that is American democracy has betrayed in every age a deep atavistic yearning for royalty. From the days of “King” Andrew Jackson to those of the “Kingfish,” Huey Long; from the era of the Robber Barons to the age of the movie “kings” and “queens”; from the first black demagogues, Marcus Garvey and Father Divine, to the “Prophet,” Elijah Muhammed; from the earliest Mafia chieftains to the bowing, kneeling, and hand-kissing of The Godfather; from the regal F.D.R. to the “Imperial Presidency” of President John F. Kennedy to the Great Pretender, Richard Nixon (who ordered the White House police costumed in the Graustarkian uniforms of European palace guards), Americans have fulfilled their craving for royalty and the trappings of royalty in so many ways that the impulse to set up kings and worship them must be reckoned one of the basic features of the national character.
—from Albert Goldman’s prologue to Elvis, 1981
