When President Obama addresses the Democratic National Convention on Thursday night, he will try to make the case for a second term. How have other recent presidents approached this task? Below we take a look back at the past four acceptance speeches that incumbents delivered at their nominating conventions:

George W. Bush, 2004: Past vs. future

Different as they are politically, there is some resemblance between Bush’s 2004 speech and the message Democrats have been trying to underscore in Charlotte this week. Bush argued in his speech that a vote for Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) represented a step backward.

“His policies of tax and spend, of expanding government rather than expanding opportunity, are the politics of the past. We are on the path to the future, and we’re not turning back,” Bush said in a speech in which he was not shy about going after his opponent....