 Bill Oakley, who was a writer on The Simpsons at the time, came up with the idea for "Two Bad Neighbors" two years before the production began. Oakley got the inspiration for the episode after the feud between the Bushes and the Simpson family, and two years later when he and Josh Weinstein became showrunners of The Simpsons, they assigned Ken Keeler to write it. Oakley said that Bill Clinton had been President of the United States for several years at the point when the episode went into production, so the feud had "faded off into oblivion". The staff therefore thought it would be funny if the two parties encountered each other again.
