MANILA, Philippines - Barring any major blunder by Barack Obama, the United States is going to see its first black president next year. And the way things are, Obama is about as likely to make a blunder over the next three weeks as John McCain is likely to make a game-changing move in that time. The last debate showed so. McCain was offensive throughout in more ways than one, trying to get a rise from Obama to make him out as the scary guy ?palling around with terrorists,? but all McCain did was cast himself in that role. As one CNN panelist said in the postmortem, McCain at several points looked like he needed to take anger management sessions.

Obama remained cool and unruffled. So cool and unruffled he refused to stick a few pins in McCain?s side, though heaven knows he had ample opportunity to do so. He didn?t go after Sarah Palin when asked who between their running mates would be better equipped to become president. He didn?t say when McCain proposed that he travel more that he didn?t get his passport only this year, unlike McCain?s running mate. He didn?t say when McCain characterized all rallies as having their share of ?fringe? people that the Democratic rallies did not have fringe people who shouted ?McCain terrorist!? and ?Kill him!? and that their fringe people did not include their vice presidential bet.

He just stuck to his core message, which was the economy, the economy, the economy. Which seemed to have worked very well: At the end of three debates, 3-0.

Friends of mine of course have wondered: What if the polls are wrong? What if the interviewees just tried to look ?pogi? and gave politically correct answers, while secretly harboring racist sentiments and planning to vote for the white guy in the end? Well, nothing?s impossible, though some are far-fetched. The polls do make allowances for the racism factor, giving Obama a minus three points there, not enough to overturn his ever-widening lead over McCain. And these are extraordinary times for Americans. These are times when they?ve become oblivious to black and white and can only see green. Or the lack of it. Or the continuing erosion of it. Or the steady disappearance of it.

So, barring any last-minute twist?which politics is not naturally home to?the United States is going to have its first black president next year. That is a watershed in history.

I do not know how far Obama will go to change US policy. As the campaign shows, he has to operate within the context of a tremendously conservative power structure that sees the most tenuous relationship with a William Ayers, a current professor who once harbored militant ideas, as the height of radicalism. As president-elect, of course, he has more leeway to go against the grain than as candidate. But the question is always by how much.

One thing I do know?which is probably the best way to gauge how far Obama will depart from orthodoxy: If McCain wins, he will cling with the tenacity of a bulldog to the Iraq War. With the most disastrous consequences for the US economy. With the most disastrous consequences for America?s relations with its allies. And with the most disastrous consequences for America?s image abroad.

Obama has promised to pull out of that war, repair America?s damaged relations with the UN and various allies, and improve the way the world looks at the United States which currently can only be put into strings of symbols containing lightning bolts and swastikas. If he can do that, he?ll have gone far toward making a kinder and gentler America, something the candidates of the last couple of decades promised but never did.

One thing I do know as well, which is that Obama?s victory by itself will already have gone a long way toward improving America?s image before the world. It?s not just because Obama is the world?s choice for next US president, though that?s quite a feat in itself. It?s simply that I go back to something Time Magazine said in its 2000 edition of the 100 most important Americans of the 20th century. One of them was Martin Luther King, and Time said then it couldn?t understand why King?s name attached only to the streets, schools and hospitals of predominantly black neighborhoods. When his significance extended to the nation as a whole.

Without King, Time said, the United States would never have had the credibility to claim to be a beacon of freedom to the world. The Iron Curtain of the USSR would have had its counterpart in the Cotton Curtain of the American South. It was King who saved America from that image. It was King who saved America from that predicament. It was King who saved America from itself.

Obama becoming the president of the United States pushes the envelope farther. The idea that America?s incursions into various parts of the world and propping up of tyrants in ?friendly states? owes in part to racist sentiments is widely held. Not without basis. Daniel Boone-Schirmer for one made an excellent case for the US occupation of the Philippines in 1898 as driven in great part by Hearst?s racist newspapers.

Obama as president should lessen that perception. It won?t make it go away, but it will lessen it. The question of how the United States can possibly value the worth of the colored peoples of the world when it can?t value the worth of its own should at least have new answers. It earns goodwill of monumental proportions, one Obama would do well to nourish and sustain with policies that advance the cause of a fairer and better America. Or with policies that push back the current image of an ugly and arrogant America. One I personally see every time McCain smirks and talks about ?that one.?

To paraphrase Dickens: It?s the worst of times, it?s the best of times. One can only hope that what?s true for America can be true for the world.