Hear Me Out: ‘The American President’ is Rob Reiner’s most underrated classic
Rob Reiner was not only a legendary actor and filmmaker but also a staunch political activist who passionately advocated for issues that he cared about, and unsurprisingly, Reiner’s political views came to influence and enhance some of his best films.
The passing of Rob Reiner marked the loss of a director who had contributed significantly to the development of modern cinema, and one of the most remarkable aspects of Reiner’s filmography is that he made an all-time classic in nearly every genre, from comedy (This Is Spinal Tap) to horror (Misery), and that’s all without even mentioning The Bucket List, which helped to coin a commonly used phrase.
Reiner’s filmography is so littered with masterpieces that it could be easy to overlook The American President, the second project that he directed, which was written by Aaron Sorkin. While not necessarily held in the same regard as some of his better-known works, The American President was a remarkably earnest examination of domestic politics that also proved that an old-fashioned love story could be told from the most surprising of perspectives.
Michael Douglas had spent the better part of the 1990s making sleazy thrillers like Basic Instinct and Disclosure, but The American President offered him the chance to play a quieter, more charismatic protagonist in Andrew Shepherd, the recently widowed President of the United States. Although Shepherd’s rivals have been hesitant to attack his character in the wake of his wife’s death, the circumstances change when he meets the outspoken lobbyist Sydney Ellen Wade (Annette Bening).
Reiner has always had an eye and ear for comedy, and The American President looks at how unusual it would be for the most powerful man in the world to start dating again, especially when he’s being monitored by security guards and other political constituents who ask for his attention.
However, Reiner uses the film as a reminder that every politician is a human being, first and foremost, and deserves empathy, because the fact that Shepherd is a person capable of love and heartbreak shows that he is in touch with his humanity, an important quality to every leader.
Reiner doesn’t take the premise as a joke, as he presents a balanced perspective on what someone like Shepherd could feasibly accomplish under duress. Even if he shares some of the more ardent views of Wade, he’s forced to toe the line of moderate politics in order to retain relationships with other members of Congress. The ethics of this dilemma comes up in a great argument scene between Shepherd and Lewis Rothschild (Michael J Fox), Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, who argues that he has not done enough to advocate for gun control.
Although The American President certainly set the template for the walk-and-talk political dialogue that Sorkin would expand upon with The West Wing, it doesn’t feel the need to berate the audience in the same way that the iconic show often would; The American President seems to acknowledge that the United States is not a perfect nation, and that in the end, Shepherd is just trying his best.
When looking at how the real President disparaged Reiner upon his death, The American President stands as a timeless portrayal of what an ideal commander-in-chief should look like.
