In speech, Obama aims to fill in details

Obama focuses on nuts and bolts in crafting Thursday DNC speech.

ByABC News
August 27, 2008, 5:54 AM

DENVER -- Barack Obama has written speeches on notepads, paper scraps and computer screens, in settings that include planes, cars and a men's room at the Illinois Capitol in Springfield.

For the speech he'll give Thursday to accept the Democratic nomination for president, Obama wrote into the night last weekend in a hotel room 15 minutes from his Chicago home. There were no distractions there. And in 2004 he had holed up at a hotel to draft the wildly successful convention speech that catapulted him into national politics.

"Superstition," he says.

Introspective, inspirational, by turns pointed or biblical, and always tailored to the political moment, Obama's speeches have been a defining feature of his historic ascent. This week, with the eyes of millions upon him, the Illinois senator says he won't attempt a reprise of his exhilarating debut four years ago.

"I don't think you can duplicate that kind of moment," Obama said this week.

Besides, he says, he's no longer part of a supporting cast for another standard-bearer. Now he needs to lay out exactly who he is and how an Obama presidency would differ from an administration headed by Republican John McCain.

Thursday is the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King's I Have A Dream speech and Obama, the nation's first black major-party nominee, says he will note how far the nation has come. But nuts and bolts are his top priority.

"I'm not aiming for a lot of high rhetoric," Obama said. "I'm much more concerned with communicating how I intend to help middle-class families live their lives. I want people to come away saying, 'Whether I'm voting for the guy or against the guy, I know what he stands for. I know what he believes.' "

Obama's lofty language has been an irresistible target for his rivals, from Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton's charge during the primaries that he's "just words" to McCain's attempts to cast his opponent's oratory as a sign that Obama is a vacuous celebrity and/or an arrogant messiah wannabe.