Made in 1995, The American President is a romantic comedy with Michael Douglas portraying US President Andrew Shepherd and Annette Benning playing Sydney Ellen Wade, a lobbyist. Shepherd, a widower, falls in love with Sydney Wade when she lobbies to have a crime control bill passed.
With an election in the offing, Presidential hopeful Bob Rumson (Richard Dreyfus) uses the relationship to attack Shepherd, including releasing to the press photos of Sydney Wade at a demonstration years ago where an American flag was burnt. She was an activist and is a member of the ACLU. Rumson also publicly criticises the relationship, intimating that Sydney Wade has loose morals. Each public utterance by Rumson is concluded by the words “I’m Bob Rumson and I’m running for President.”
Shepherd refuses to respond to the personal attacks, maintaining that he does not want to get in the gutter with Rumson arguing such matters. He prefers dignified silence. His popularity declines and, to secure votes for passage of a bill that he wants, he breaks his agreement with Sydney Wade relative to passage of her crime bill. She is fired by the people who had engaged her as a lobbyist and she breaks it off with Shepherd.
In the following scene, President Shepherd, having lost Sydney, having supported a bill he does not believe in whilst having dumped a bill that had merit, delivers a speech in the Press Room different to the speech he has prepared:
