Obama Thought ‘Yes We Can’ Was ‘Too Corny,’ Says David Axelrod

President Barack Obama looks at his watch while speaking at the Ford Stamping Plant in Liberty, Mo., Friday, Sept. 20, 2013. Obama traveled to the Kansas City area to visit the Ford automotive plant to highlight the ... President Barack Obama looks at his watch while speaking at the Ford Stamping Plant in Liberty, Mo., Friday, Sept. 20, 2013. Obama traveled to the Kansas City area to visit the Ford automotive plant to highlight the progress in the economy since the 2008 financial crisis. (AP Photo/Orlin Wagner) MORE LESS

President Obama was not that big a fan of his future presidential campaign slogan in 2004, according to former top Obama advisor David Axelrod in his new book, “Believer.”

“‘Yes we can.’ Isn’t that too corny?” Obama said during his campaign for the Illinois Senate, Axelrod told The New York Times Magazine last week.

Axelrod told the Times he tried to make the case for the slogan, but it was the future First Lady that convinced Obama to run with it.

“Not corny,” Michelle Obama told the future forty-fourth president.

h/t Politico

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  1. I like the slogan, don’t find it corny at all.

    I’ll never forget the will.ia.m video where Obama is reciting the Yes We Can speech, and other people are saying passages along with it too. That was a great moment in the campaign. Classic.

    And a winner.

  2. The all time campaign classic was Christine O’Donnell’s “I am not a witch”.

  3. Avatar for jw1 jw1 says:

    Was well and truly the moment I knew that American politics
    had crossed the Event Horizon without chance for escape.

    jw1

  4. I don’t know…I’m thinking of running for office and I was thinking I should declare that I am a witch. Then again, I live in a section of the country where witches are respected.

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