David Axelrod: Obama Almost Vetoed My ‘Yes We Can’ Slogan

AMANPOUR: “And we mentioned that you were the man behind, ‘Yes, we can,’ which was very, very catchy at the time. How did that go down when you presented it to your candidate? How did you even come up with it?”
AXELROD: “Well, I came up with it — this was from our — it actually began in our 2004 campaign for the Senate in Illinois, Senator Obama was then a state senator running for the state Senate — for the United States Senate — and this was for his first ad in that campaign. We only had a few. But ‘Yes, we can,’ was a slogan that I developed because I felt it captured the spirit of the campaign. It was about 'we' and not him. It was about — it was optimistic at a time when people were very pessimistic and cynical. And it talked about what we could do together. So I wrote it into a spot about all the improbable things he had done in his life and it finished with him saying, now it’s — now they say we can’t change Washington; I’m Barack Obama and I approved this message to say yes, we can. We did one run-through; he got to the end of the ad and he said — it kind of crinkled up his nose and said, yes, we can. Is that too corny? So my heart stopped because I loved it and I made a vigorous case for it. And he wasn’t convinced. But luckily, Michelle Obama was sitting on a staircase in this home where we were shooting to watch him do his first ad, and he turned to her and he said, ‘Miche, what do you think?’ And she just slowly turned her head and said, ‘Not corny.’ And then he said, ‘OK, fine.’ So he didn’t much care what I had to say about it. But she convinced him that it was good to go. And it turned out to be kind of iconic tagline, not just for that campaign but for campaigns to come.”