When former president Bill Clinton bounded onto the makeshift stage in the volunteer fire department of this West Virginia coalfields town, it was reported that the crowd "shrieked like they were about to hear an Elvis Presley concert", rather than listen to a 40-minute speech about health care and the economy.

"It's really exciting," Danville resident Tommy Crisp said afterward. "This is the first time I've ever seen him."

In firehouses, school gyms and fairgrounds this week, the 42nd president became a familiar sight, just one of the signs that West Virginia has attained a political prominence it doesn't normally enjoy.

Of course Bill Clinton in the past was perceived as the "Elvis" president, with Clinton himself drawing the connection between the two Southerners going back, in the public eye at least, as far as the then-candidate's saxophone version of "Heartbreak Hotel" on the Arsenio Hall Show.

Greil Marcus even published a book 'Double Trouble: Bill Clinton and Elvis Presley in a Land of No Alternatives'.

Posted:  13th. May 2008