The American President was released 20 years ago today. The intervening decades brought, among so much else, 9/11, and wars both literal and figurative, and the Great Recession, and the housing crisis, and the White House’s transition from a Democratic administration to a Republican to a Democratic again. They saw the infamy of the “hanging chad” and the rise of the Tea Party and the normalization of the Internet and, in general, widespread public pessimism about the ability of government, at pretty much every level, to make meaningful change in the lives of those most ordinary and mythologized of creatures: “everyday Americans.”

The American President foresaw the prismatic political anxieties that would follow it. And it tried to preempt them. And this is the other way the movie functions as a rom-com: It assumes that the relationship between the president and the people is itself, in its way, a romantic one. The American President insists that the connections that tie the government and the governed are primarily emotional. It believes that politics caters most readily to those Americans who, as Stephen Colbert put it, “know with their hearts.”

And so: The film makes clear to its audience that President Shepherd is better than his Republican presidential opponent, Bob Rumson, not because of anything we’re told about Rumson’s policies or vision for the country, but because Shepherd is charming and well-educated and appreciative of America in a nerdy, tell-stories-about-the-Founders-at-cocktail parties kind of way. (Rumson, we are meant to understand, is none of those things.) Further, we’re meant to understand that the obvious better-ness exists not just on a political level, but a moral one. As Sydney puts it to Andy, exasperated at Rumson’s latest volley, “How do you have patience for people who claim they love America, but clearly can’t stand Americans?” Shepherd is Good, and Rumson is Bad, and these are truths Sorkin telegraphs over the course of the film—truths that we, too, can know with our hearts.

The American President is the cinematic predecessor of The West Wing, and it shares with that show not just assorted idealisms and occasional mansplainings and a general veneer of perky partisanship, but also very specific characters and figures. Its president is a former professor who has been goaded into political office by a best friend who also, conveniently, serves as his chief of staff. Its press secretary is a woman who is notable because of both her wit and the fact that she is unusually tall. Its speechwriter is a guy who is idealistic and overzealous and wunderkind-y. Its dialogue is snappy and full of the kind of light eruditions that congratulate and soothe in equal measure. “Come, friends, let us away,” A.J. McInerney, the best-friend-and-also-chief-of-staff, tells his fellow staffers. (McInerney is played by Martin Sheen, who plays President Josiah Bartlet on … yeah.)