Barack Obama was days shy of his 43rd birthday and months from being elected to the U.S. Senate when he stepped onto a Boston stage at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

A state lawmaker from Illinois, he had an unusual profile to be a headline speaker at a presidential convention. But the self-declared skinny kid with a funny name captivated Democrats that night, going beyond a requisite pitch for nominee John Kerry instead to introduce the nation to his politics of hope and vision of one United States of America not defined or defeated by its differences.

Kerry lost that November to Republican President George W. Bush. But Obama etched himself into the national consciousness, beginning a remarkable rise that put him in the Oval Office barely four years later. And now, eight years removed from the presidency, Obama returns Tuesday night to the DNC as the elder statesman with a different task.