We all have our guilty pleasures – pigging out on potato chips, scrolling TikTok, binging old rom-coms – but for my money nothing beats sappy escapism, the kind that warms your comfort zone, that transports you far away from the here and now. Especially now.

Rob Reiner crafted a string of classics. In recent days, his quality sextet has been invoked like a mantra: “Spinal Tap,” “Stand by Me,” “When Harry Met Sally,” “The Princess Bride,” “Misery,” “A Few Good Men.”

Rarely has anyone mentioned “The American President,” his 1995 collaboration with wordy wordsmith Aaron Sorkin – and probably for good reason because it’s not worthy of inclusion in Rob’s canon. At best one might charitably say that it’s canon-adjacent.

But here’s where the guilty pleasure kicks in. If one is pining for a president who is not insane, who’s buoyed by earnestly hyper-competent aides, who doesn’t lie with each breath, who doesn’t nod off during meetings, and who’s not a malignantly narcissist, then Andrew Shepherd (Michael Douglas in his silky smooth mode) is definitely your man. He’s pushing a bill to curb climate change by cutting fossil fuel emissions! He wants to curb access to handguns! And he’s so psychologically secure that even after a female lobbyist scathingly insults him, he does not call her Piggy! Instead, within, like, five minutes, he asks her for a date.

Our fantasy POTUS is a widower, so, yes, he’s probably lonely and horny. But Sydney the lobbyist (Annette Bening) is supposed to be a career professional, so why would she bed down with the guy she’s lobbying? That felt like a core plot flaw in the more innocent era of 1995, but when viewed through our prism of 2025, amidst the stench of rampant Trump corruption, who cares? How pleasurable it is to travel 30 years back in time and treat that conflict of interest as something weighty. Whereas, if Trump were to shack up with a Russian hooker sent by his Kremlin master, it would just be another day in dystopia.

That’s because we’re numb. Call it a survival mechanism. By contrast, nobody in “The American President” is numb.

Do you remember (if possible) the country we grew up in, when the presidency inspired awe? Even the film’s manipulative musical score is awestruck. And Sydney the lobbyist is awestruck. She’s a veteran ass-kicker and former prosecutor, yet somehow, when she enters the White House grounds, she beams at her surroundings like a bedazzled third-grader fresh off the bus on a field trip.

She gushes to the security guard, “This is my first time at the White House! I’m trying to savor the Capra-esque quality!” And the guard helpfully says, “Frank Capra, great American director. It’s a Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” Capra was big on pie-eyed idealism, and Reiner, with a massive wink-wink, is telling us early on that he’s gonna own it all. And does he ever. His film is seasoned with enough Capra-corn to melt even the numbest heart. If one is willing to go with the flow.

There’s a sweeping shot of the White House – with the East Wing intact. There’s a moment when POTUS gives roses to Sydney after plucking them from the Rose Garden – the old garden, before its lawn was paved with cement. There’s a subplot where aides are swaying congressmen to vote for POTUS’ reform agenda – with no worries that Capitol Hill is infested by a fascist-friendly cult. One cannot imagine that President Shepherd would append his name to the Kennedy Center in violation of federal law, or that he would pal around with a pedophile and refuse to fully release the perv’s files in violation of federal law.

Imagine a world where a widowed POTUS dates an unmarried age-appropriate consenting woman – and it becomes a “character issue” that costs him 17 points in the polls. Imagine a world where a POTUS says, “You cannot address crime prevention without getting rid of assault weapons and handguns.” And imagine a world where nutcase conservatives are out of power, and their leader, played with evil intent by Richard Dreyfuss, is mocked by a POTUS as someone “who couldn’t find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight.”

Pile it on, Rob Reiner! I’m there for all of it! Morph Michael Douglas into Jimmy Stewart and show him fighting for the American Way, going after guns and getting the girl. Trust me, it’s the feel-good flick of the season, a guilty pleasure sweeter than a tin of gingerbread cookies. It’s ultimate Rob, who truly cared, who sought in reel and real life to celebrate what we could be at our best.

Three months ago Reiner said: “It’s really gotten to a very, very scary place in this country, and we’re going to have to figure out how to dig ourselves out of this…But we have got to keep speaking out. Everybody has to keep speaking out. We’ve been the longest living democracy ever, and we certainly haven’t done everything right. We’ve done a lot of things wrong, but we go in fits and starts to move in the right direction. There was a time a woman couldn’t vote. There was a time Black person couldn’t vote. There was a time a Black person couldn’t marry a white person. There was a time where people of the same sex couldn’t marry. We move forward. We move forward.”

Move over, Capra. I’m feeling verklempt.

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Copyright 2025 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes the Subject to Change newsletter. Email him at [email protected]