What President Obama Will Say in DNC Address

In what the White House calls the "biggest moment he has left" on the national stage, President Obama is expected to declare Hillary Clinton the new "torchbearer" of the Democratic Party and heir to his vision of "hope and change."

Senior White House officials previewing Obama's remarks to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia said Obama would use the spotlight to focus on Clinton and her qualifications for the nation's highest office.

Unlike other recent outgoing two-term presidents, Obama will not offer a valedictory or detail a laundry list of accomplishments, the officials said. He is expected to bear witness to Clinton as a public servant, invoking what administration officials described as Obama's unique perspective on his former rival turned "trusted colleague."

The president is the "only person in America who's mourned with every victim of a mass shooting in this country...who's written to the family of every service member killed" during his term, one official said. He's also the only person to run against Hillary Clinton for a full year and a half and then been in the room with her to witness her decision-making, added the official.

The speech comes 12 years to the day that Obama first stepped into the national political spotlight at the 2004 Democratic Convention nominating John Kerry, and eight years after Obama formally defeated Hillary Clinton to clinch his own presidential nomination.

Obama will make clear that Clinton is now the "torchbearer" of the Democratic Party, the administration officials said.

As for Donald Trump, the president is expected to mention him by name, though "less than half a dozen times." The officials said that while the speech would not be about Trump or offer specific rebuttals to Trump proposals, Obama would frame the 2016 presidential election as about defending the "moral fabric of our country."

Obama has been working on the address since early June, officials said.

After watching his wife First Lady Michelle Obama address the convention on Monday night, the president stayed up until 3:30 a.m. working on his speech, an official said.

The president worked through half a dozen drafts and rehearsed the remarks out-loud at the White House on Tuesday.

While outgoing presidents typically have kept a low profile during the fall campaign, the White House says Obama is planning an aggressive public campaign schedule on behalf of Clinton.

"We've said to her that we will do whatever we can to help her," one Obama aide said.