Obama hopes unique biography can also seem familiar

By Caren Bohan

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.