DENVER — The nation's Democrats have come here to their national convention to honor presidential nominee Barack Obama. But first, they have to get to know him.

That's the focus of today's first day of the four-day nominating convention that will send Obama into battle against Republican John McCain for the presidency of the United States.

It's an important focus, because, despite months of grueling campaigning and microscopic examination and analysis by the news media and by Obama's political opponents, many Americans (and not just a few Democrats) remain a little unclear about who Barack Obama is and what core values he would bring to national leadership.

This isn't Obama's fault. He has written searingly and uncompromisingly about himself in his best-selling autobiography. His campaign has established an unprecedented Internet-driven personal relationship with supporters and contributors.

But for all of that, Obama remains new, somewhat mysterious to many and — as he has put it himself — something of a blank slate.

So today, the Democrats will spend a carefully orchestrated evening in an attempt to put more flesh on those skinny bones.

Hawai'i delegates here for the convention believe they know Obama well. After all, he forged his basic identity in multicultural, multiethnic, physically isolated and environmentally sensitive Hawai'i. When they hear him speak, they hear echoes of that background.

But Island delegates wonder whether the rest of the country is capable of sharing this understanding, or even if they really care.

After all, the Barack Obama to be nominated this week is, to most of the nation, an African-American, a product of Chicago's famously tough political system and a representative of a new generation of computer-savvy, post-racial, post-partisan kind of politics. In that context, does it matter that his biography includes Hawai'i?

Many in the Hawai'i delegation say it does, even though it is an element tough to explain.

Former Gov. John Waihee was attempting to explain Obama's Island-style coolness to a delegate from New Jersey Sunday afternoon. It's not that people from Hawai'i don't have passion, he explained, but some people don't always recognize that passion beneath the veneer of Hawai'i-style reserve and modesty.

"We care," he said, "even if sometimes people don't see it."

Hawai'i Democratic Party Chairman Brian Schatz said he believes there are many things about Obama that people do not yet fully understand. They don't all know, he said, that his grandfather was a white man from Kansas who served in World War II, that he is a devout family man or even that his Punahou-Columbia-Harvard pedigree does not imply a gilded background.

"He was not," said Schatz, "a typical Punahou student. People will learn that he lived in a small inexpensive apartment with a single mother and had to rely on scholarship help" to get through Punahou.

Those biographical pukas, and more, will be filled tonight with a roster of speeches by people who knew Obama, taught him, served in politics with him and are his family.

Among those scheduled to speak are Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama's sister and — in a prime-time address — his wife, Michelle.

There will be plenty of issue politics to come this week. But tonight, the focus will be on Obama the man.

Jerry Burris' column appears Wednesdays in this space. See his blog at blogs.honoluluadvertiser.com/akamaipolitics. Reach him at jrryburris@yahoo.com.