President Barack Obama will tonight lay out his case for being re-elected to a second term by comparing himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt, who won an unprecedented three presidential elections and led America to recovery after the Great Depression.

He will say: 'And the truth is, it will take more than a few years for us to solve challenges that have built up over decades. It will require common effort, shared responsibility, and the kind of bold, persistent experimentation that Franklin Roosevelt pursued during the only crisis worse than this one.'

Obama will formally accept the Democratic presidential nomination, capping a week in which speeches from his wife Michelle Obama and Bill Clinton, the husband of his erstwhile rival, received widespread praise.

He will tell Americans: 'Our problems can be solved. Our challenges can be met. The path we offer may be harder, but it leads to a better place.'

Roosevelt dominated American politics for the 12 years of his presidency and beyond. He is commonly recognised as the greatest Democratic president and, along with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, one of the three greatest American presidents.

Not only did he bring America out of the depression, he oversaw the introduction of the New Deal social programmes, laid the foundations for the United Nations and led the country in the Second World War after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, dying just when victory was in sight.

Excerpts from tonight's speech released in advance showed that Obama would attempt to frame the election not as a referendum on his four-year term, during which unemployment has risen to 8.3 percent, leaving more than 23 million Americans out of work, but as a choice between him and Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee.

'On every issue, the choice you face won’t be just between two candidates or two parties,' he was due to say. 'It will be a choice between two different paths for America. A choice between two fundamentally different visions for the future.'

'I won’t pretend the path I’m offering is quick or easy. I never have. You didn’t elect me to tell you what you wanted to hear. You elected me to tell you the truth.

(Read by Brian Salter. Brian Salter is a journalist at the China Daily Website.)

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(Agencies)