YMMV / The American President

• Anvilicious: Shepherd's press conference speech. Let's see: the ACLU is supremely good and noble and anyone who doesn't belong to it doesn't believe in the Constitution; "going after the guns" is GREAT for fighting crime; flag-burning is a symbol of freedom; and there is absolutely no reason anyone should have a legitimate problem with Shepard's relationship with an environmental lobbyist even though in the exact same speech he's just talked about going through with the legislation she's been pushing. Uh-huh.
• Designated Villain: Senator Rumson. The film goes out of its’ way to make him as unlikable as possible. However all he’s doing is challenging the character and policies of the current President as he prepares to challenge him in the upcoming election. Otherwise known as Politics. He doesn’t do anything illegal or even unethical.
• Fan-Preferred Cut Content: The original script has a cut scene where the president has a conversation with his daughter that greatly fleshes out her character and explains some of her behavior from earlier scenes. Many fans feel that deleting that scene was a bad call.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In January 2012, then-Australian cabinet minister Anthony Albanese plagiarised lines from this film in a speech slamming the then-Opposition Leader: "In Australia we have serious challenges to solve and we need serious people to solve them. Unfortunately, Tony Abbott is not the least bit interested in fixing anything. He is only interested in two things: making Australians afraid of it and telling them who's to blame for it." This will undoubtedly affect the way many Australians see the film in future.
    • For some Australians, the line, "Well I sure hope "the Sydney issue" refers in some way to a problem we're having with Australia, because if it's anything else—" proved to be Harsher in Hindsight after the Liberal Party under Tony Abbott regained power the following year, arguably as a result of doing exactly that mentioned in the speech about the opponent not being interested in fixing things.
  • Also, a lot of lines become this for fans of The West Wing, in particular "Someday someone's going to have to explain to me the virtue of a proportional response."
  • This isn't the last time Martin Sheen would work with a powerful leader named Shepard.
  • John Mahoney and Wendie Malick play co-workers who butt heads in this film. They'd go on to play lovers in Frasier just a few years later.
  • The scene where Andy is Mistaken for Prank Call by Sydney. Shortly after Barack Obama was elected in 2008, he made a phone call to Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. She hung up on him, saying that she thought it was a prank from a local radio station. Within minutes, Obama's Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emanuel called her to say that President-Elect Obama wanted to speak with her...and she hung up on him too. Obama had to ask a friend and fellow Congressman of Ros-Lehtinen's to call and convince her that she was not being pranked, and the President-Elect was really trying to call her.
  • At one point, A.J. continues to insist that he won't call Shepherd by his first name while paraphrasing Green Eggs and Ham. 24 years later, Michael Douglas would star in an adaptation of that very book.
• Spiritual Successor: The West Wing takes many of the same character archetypes, sets and at least one actor from this movie into that show.
• Strawman Has a Point:
  • While it was not stated in the movie as clearly, with the focus on the relationship and the obvious comparisons to President Clinton's troubles, what President Shepherd was doing was somewhat unethical as seen from the outside. He was in a relationship with a lobbyist that he was also working with at the time on a major piece of legislation. If a real politician did this, he would justifiably be attacked in the press for this.
  • In the Fridge Brilliance page, it's mentioned that Rumson never attacking the conflict of interest issue is actually good for his campaign. A legitimate issue like that would resolve the scandal and play into the fact he doesn't have any real charisma (from what we see) or good arguments to oppose the President's policies (even if they are worthy of being challenged).

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