The rise and rise of Barack Obama

0 Comments | AFP, February, 2007

SPRINGFIELD, United States (AFP) — Senator Barack Obama is hoping his own unorthodox version of the American dream propels him from being a "skinny kid with a funny name" to being the most powerful man in the world.

Obama, 45, who formally declared his candidacy in the 2008 White House race Saturday, has rocketed to political stardom in only two years, and has high hopes of becoming the first African-American president.

"Today, together, we can finish the work that needs to be done, and usher in a new birth of freedom on this Earth," Obama told supporters chanting his name, as he opened his campaign in the midwestern hometown of former US president Abraham Lincoln.

Yet after only two years in Congress, and six as a local legislator in Illinois, the former...