Jon Favreau

Dec 3, 2008

jon favreau barack obama speechwriter

On the night of the New Hampshire primary in January, a young man of twenty-six stood at the back of the crowd in the Nashua High gym and watched his boss deliver a speech conceding defeat to Hillary Clinton in the day's election. And even though his boss, Barack Obama, had lost, Jon Favreau couldn't help but smile. Obama had won big in Iowa just five days before, sending the Clinton campaign into a death spiral, but Hillary's surprising comeback meant that any notions of putting her away quickly were now dispelled. This would be a long, bloody fight for the nomination. Yet they all smiled. Had there ever been a more triumphal concession speech, ever?

And then the senator got to the emotional heart of the speech, the part when he recognized that nothing this big is easy. "For when we have faced down impossible odds, when we've been told we're not ready or that we shouldn't try or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can...."

Speeches claiming victory are never as interesting as those conceding defeat, because people are never more interesting than when they lose. In any case, neither Favreau nor his cowriters Adam Frankel and Ben Rhodes had been expecting to have to concede anything that evening. But things change quickly. After consulting with Obama for about half an hour -- Obama talked, Favreau typed notes -- they decided to reprise the hopeful refrain of "Yes, we can...." which had been the slogan of Obama's 2004 senate race in Illinois. And at that moment, a mere presidential campaign was transformed into a movement, coalesced around three simple words.