[3] The idea for the film came from Clinton's joke writer Mark Katz who had observed that a dominant media narrative in the late days of the 2000 election was that the incumbent president, whose wife was campaigning for U.S. Senate while national attention was focused on the presidential contest between Al Gore and George W. Bush, was "increasingly being depicted as the lonely guy minding the store".

[3] In a 2007 analysis of rhetorical humor in American political communication, Michael Andrew Phillips-Anderson argued that the film satirized, not Clinton, but rather the media who had suggested the president had advanced to lame duck status.

By showing Clinton involved in mundane tasks that would be extraordinary for a U.S. president to undertake, such as answering the White House switchboard and practicing origami, the film served to erode such assertions by highlighting their absurdity.

[1][2] The Final Days starred Bill Clinton as himself, with cameo appearances by a number of journalists and U.S. government officials, including: Helen Thomas, Madeleine Albright, Sam Donaldson, and Al Gore.

Kevin Spacey also makes a brief appearance, as himself, retrieving the Academy Award he won at that year's Oscars for Best Actor (in the film American Beauty) from Clinton.