Obama hopes unique biography can also seem familiar

DENVER (Reuters) - Barack Obama burst onto the national stage four years ago with a speech describing himself as a skinny guy with a funny name and an improbable life story.

On Thursday night, in a return to the Democratic convention stage, the 47-year-old U.S. senator takes his place in the history books as the first black presidential nominee of a major political party.

For many he embodies the American Dream in which anybody can grow up to be president, including the son of a Kansas mother and an absent Kenyan father with an exotic name who spent his early years living abroad.

"In no other country on earth is my story even possible," Obama said in his keynote speech at the last Democratic party convention in 2004.

His oratorical gifts were on full display in that speech and have become Obama's trademark, launching him to instant fame and setting the stage for his White House bid in the November 4 election against Republican John McCain.

On Thursday, the first-term senator from Illinois will accept the Democratic presidential nomination before a crowd of 75,000 people at the giant Invesco football stadium in Denver.

The event coincides with the 45th anniversary of civil rights leader Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. That 1963 speech is seen as an expression of the country's highest aspirations of equality and justice.

Many Democrats see Obama's campaign as a step towards bridging the country's racial divide -- black Americans constitute some 12 percent of the population -- but he has made a point of not running on his race.

PRAISE AND DERISION

To his legions of fans, Obama is a once-in-a-generation politician who recalls the youthful eloquence and inspiration of U.S. President John Kennedy and his brother Robert Kennedy, both assassinated in the 1960s.

But Obama's critics, many of whom deride his central political message of hope and change as naive, see him as little more than a celebrity with a thin resume.

In Thursday's speech, which Obama has said would be more "more workman-like" and more focused on policy details than the 2004 speech, Obama will once again evoke his unique biography.

One of Obama's goals is to play down his persona as a political rock star and instead show a more down-to-earth side.

What people will see, said Obama's senior adviser Robert Gibbs, "is a normal, everyday, average father and husband in a normal, every day, average family."

But emphasizing the "everyday" and "average" side of Obama will be no small feat.

The very details of Obama's life -- his multicultural background and upbringing in Hawaii and Indonesia -- that appeal to young people and upscale voters who make up his base of support seem exotic to blue-collar and older voters in industrial states like Ohio which may decide the election.

As Obama himself said this week, many of those voters may be drawn more to McCain's biography as a Vietnam war hero and prisoner of war who survived torture and went on to become a veteran Arizona senator known for his maverick style.

"John McCain has a great biography. He's been a POW. I've got a funny name," said Obama, who is running neck-and-neck with the 71-year-old McCain to succeed Republican President George W. Bush.

RAGS TO RICHES

Obama has a rags-to-riches side to his story he hopes will resonate with middle-class voters.

His mother Ann Dunham was just 18 when she married Barack Obama Sr. and became a single parent when Obama was only two.

Obama has recalled that his mother sometimes relied on food stamps to get by when he was growing up and used to wake him at 4 a.m. five days a week to tutor him during the time the family lived in Indonesia.

She and Obama's grandparents, who helped to raise him, managed to get him accepted to Punahou Academy, a prestigious private school in Hawaii. He later attended Columbia University and Harvard Law School.

Obama's 1995 best-selling memoir, "Dreams From My Father," focuses on his search for identity and his effort to connect with his absent father through a trip to Kenya to discover his ancestry.

In his 2006 book, "The Audacity of Hope," Obama tells of how his political identity was shaped through the Midwestern values of honesty and respect for others instilled him by his mother and grandparents.

"Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values, and pass them on to the next generation," Obama's wife Michelle said in her speech at the Denver convention on Monday night, where she portrayed him as a doting father to the couple's two daughters Sasha, 7, and Malia, 10.

'LITTLE LESS EXOTIC'

Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia, said Obama's chances of winning the presidential election may hinge on whether he can portray himself to middle-class Americans as "a little less exotic."

"His biography is attractive to young people but it's also why's he's behind with seniors," Sabato said.

In the run-up to his convention speech, as Obama campaigned through Virginia, a traditionally Republican state he hopes to capture in November, voters offered mixed views on whether his life story would be central to their decision.

"I really don't know anything about his biography," said Troy Chapman, a 35-year-old sales representative from Charlottesville. "I don't see him as being the celebrity that everybody's making him out to be."

Chapman described himself as undecided but said he was leaning toward Obama because he was unhappy with Bush's policies of the last eight years.

For James Hargrove, 39, of Richmond, Obama embodies the kind of change he wants to see for the country.

"I was raised by a single parent as well -- my mother -- and turned out to be fairly successful," said Hargrove, who runs a program to help troubled youth and says he strongly identifies with Obama's past career as a community organizer in Chicago.

(Editing by Howard Goller, Patricia Wilson and David Storey)