It?s going to be, by all indications, a great American moment. And even if we don?t matter to America as much as America still matters to us, we can also celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States.

Because beyond America?s borders, the new American president has been embraced as a symbol of hope and change and the audacity of both. And while Obama will have to start working to right the wobbly ship of state immediately after he?s inaugurated, he richly deserves the triumphant welcome into the White House (and the high cost of securing that entry) that many people believed was unthinkable just a year ago.

In this country, which almost automatically checks the pulse of its former colonial master across the Pacific before it can even breathe, Obama?s spectacular ascent in a couple of years from political obscurity to the office of the most powerful man in the world?s only superpower has resonated powerfully, as well. Why else would a supposedly serious candidate in the national elections next year declare that he is ?the Filipino Obama,? even if he shares practically nothing with the new American president aside from a dark skin tone?

America, as the writer Carlos Bulosan once said, remains in the Philippines? heart, after all. And our America-loving, English-speaking parents have been replaced by an entire generation of young people studying to become nurses in the US or, failing that, to speak and think enough like Americans to land a job talking to someone in the US from a call center in Manila.

Then there?s the millions of Americans of Filipino descent, from the great-grandchildren of the first pineapple-pickers in Hawaii to most recent immigrant just off the plane in LA or San Francisco, whose strong ties with the old country (and regular remittances to relatives left behind) keep America foremost in our thoughts. That a young, charismatic, intelligent, idealistic and overachieving member of a minority like Obama can become US president is something that any Filipino who?s ever been oppressed and who?s dared to hope for change ? here, Stateside or in any other country in the world?can relate to.

For Filipinos disheartened and disillusioned with their country?s current situation, Obama?s message of audacious hope and believable change also had a powerful, bracing effect. Here was a young political outsider with a gift of rhetoric, half-black, no less, who took everything Americans once believed a President should be and stood it on its head.

And Obama did so by rousing Americans who have had enough of a dim-witted, prevaricating, war-mongering, crony capitalist-coddling president who was not even considered popular enough to campaign for his own party?s candidate. And before that, Obama had to defeat the most popular, powerful and well-funded woman to ever seek the US presidency in a bruising nominating battle that seemed to have been decided against him even before it began.

The story of Barack Obama is so improbable and its ending so fairy tale-ish that many Filipinos could actually consider it, mutatis mutandis, as their own. And beyond the always-palpable influence of America in nearly every Filipino?s life, it is this soap-opera quality of the new American president?s rise to power that makes us want to adopt Barack Obama as one of us.

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I had first encountered Obama through the medium that was also going to make him known to many Americans, YouTube. Like many, I was entranced by this neophyte Illinois senator?s speeches on the Internet video-sharing site?and I was moved enough to write about the Obama phenomenon and to decide that I would make it my business to track this man?s progress (or his expected lack of it) in his quest.

But while I had an idea of how Obama-mania was sweeping the US in the past two years, it was meeting a young Filipino-American named Daniel Santos, who lived with his parents in a Chicago suburb, early last year that convinced me that this black man with the unelectable name could really pull it off.

It?s not at all surprising that Daniel lived with his parents?he was, after all, just 13 years old and an eight-grade honor student at a local Catholic school. But Daniel was also that increasingly common young person in America who got really interested in politics because of Obama, even if Daniel also remained obsessed with sports, video games, loud music and girls.

When Daniel discovered Barack Obama, he was hooked, just like many young Americans who took to the Democrat and all that he stood for. Daniel?s father, an old friend who immigrated to the US a couple of decades ago, was?like many Filipino-Americans, actually?a staunch status-quo Republican who tolerated his son?s infatuation with Obama but who didn?t expect that it would become a permanent fixation.

Daniel read everything he could find about Obama, including his best-selling books, with the same unflagging interest that he reserved for LeBron James, his favorite basketball hero, and his beloved Chicago Cubs baseball team. (While he was allowed to put up posters of Obama in his room, his parents drew the line on plastering Obama stickers on any of the Santos family?s cars.)

Observing Daniel, who is a friend of and the same age as my elder son Jack, up close at the Santos home in Chicago, I perceived a peculiar Obama strength, something that pollsters and pundits would acknowledge later, as well: The would-be president was also speaking to the next generation, not just to the party machinery, its ward leaders and their delegates.

Obama had made politics?and believing in the electoral system?cool again to young people in a country where even long-time voters couldn?t be bothered to go to polling places on election day anymore. John McCain never stood a chance.

I was so impressed with Daniel Santos? fervor that I asked him to write down why he wanted Obama to win, even if Daniel himself wasn?t old enough to vote. Daniel?s thoughts on his idol, e-mailed to me after I returned to Manila, ran in this space.

Now Daniel wants to take up law and enter politics like his idol Barack. Who knows? Maybe Daniel could become the first Filipino-American in the White House.

So here?s to Barack Obama and the infectious audacity of his hopes and dreams. Would that we, in this benighted land, could come up with such a leader, someone who will inspire us, unite us and restore our fallen-away faith in the power of change.