A gifted orator, Obama is on an historic path

By Caren Bohan

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

On Tuesday, he may make history by becoming the first black man elected U.S. president.

Born in Hawaii to a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya, Obama spent part of his childhood in Indonesia.

In the 2004 speech to the Democratic National Convention that vaulted him to rock-star status, he introduced himself to America as someone who hoped to bridge divisions, political and racial.

"In no other country on earth is my story even possible," Obama said, highlighting his biracial heritage as a metaphor for his call for unity.

"There is not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America," he said. "There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America -- there's the United States of America."

The first-term Illinois senator, known for his stirring eloquence, now draws tens of thousands to his political rallies and is the author of two best-selling autobiographical books.

To his fans, he is an inspiring once-in-a-generation politician like President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert, both assassinated in the 1960s.

To his critics, including Republican rival John McCain, Obama is little more than a celebrity with a thin resume, an eloquent speaker who preaches "naive" foreign policies and advocates "socialist" economic policies.

But if Obama, who commands a solid lead against McCain just four days before Election Day, fares as well as the polls predict, the Arizona senator and Vietnam War hero will become the latest in a long line of politicians who have underestimated Obama.

They include New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, the former first lady he defeated in the Democratic primary.

It was in Hawaii where Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, met his father, Barack Obama Sr., who was from a goat-herding family in Kenya and got a scholarship to study in the United States.

They married and she gave birth to her son when she was just 18. Two years later, Obama's father abandoned the family and his mother raised him with the help of his grandparents.

FOOD STAMPS AND TUTORING

Obama has recalled that his mother once had to rely on food stamps to get by when he was growing up. When the family moved to Indonesia for four years after she remarried, his mother used to regularly wake him at 4 a.m. to tutor him.