IN THE VALLEY of Elah, twicea day for 40 days, Goliath, the champion of the Philistines, challenged the Israelites to send out their champion and decide the battle in single combat. The Israelites were afraid – except for one boy. David, son of Jesse, who refused his brother Saul’s armor and took only a sling and five stones taken from a brook.

And so the battle: the towering Goliath, armor glinting in the sunlight, David with his staff and sling. There was taunting, and the names of gods were thrown as curses, and David struck Goliath with a stone from his sling. The Philistine fell, and young David cut off the Philistine’s head. At Goliath’s death, “the troops of Israel and Judah rose up with a shout and pursued the Philistines as far as Gath and the gates of Ekron.”

I am told that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is running for office in Pampanga. Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman denies the Philippine Daily Inquirer report quoting the President’s intentions, and both Pampanga Vice Governor Joseller Guiao and Quezon City Representative Matias Defensor point to the fact that Ms Arroyo has yet to announce her political plan. And yet both gentlemen of the administration say that her candidacy will be welcome news. Defensor says it would mean a leader with experience. Guiao says she makes his townsmen happy, as “she brings many projects and our people are benefiting from them.”

It is Cabinet Secretary Silvestre Bello who couches his opinion in terms of the myth. David would face Goliath, but Goliath would win.

I have seen the photograph of sociology professor Randy David on his motorcycle, a gray-haired Don Quixote riding off to chase his unreachable star. This is what he calls the gauntlet he tossed before his President, a quixotic quest. In “Man of La Mancha,” Aldonza tells Don Quixote that there is no use for heroes. The world is a dung heap, she says, “and maggots crawl over it.” Whether I win or lose does not matter, says Quixote. “Only that I follow the quest.”

The fact that I understand we are desperate for heroes, and that we have settled, again and again, for men who cast tall shadows by walking on stilts, does not mean I’m not looking for the man with the balls to walk through the dung. This is what a hero is: a man who stands at the mouth of hell and chooses to step into the dark. It is not that choice that makes a hero, it is the choices he makes after – the way he walks the path, the way he stands before Goliath, the choices he makes long after his sling runs out of stones. The killing fields of Cambodia and the bones buried in Holocaust graves were results of the intentions of messiahs who claimed they wanted to make the world a better place.

I do not know if David is a hero, but I do know that he and his Ducati stand in the way of a giant whose lumbering gait can crush what is left of a disillusioned country. Speaker Prospero Nograles questions David’s intentions: in that he will run to prevent Ms Arroyo from winning – “only because he disliked PGMA [Arroyo] and not the usual reason for running, which is for public service.”

It will be perhaps the greatest public service to prevent the Arroyo dynasty from committing one more national rape – the sort that Nograles happily cheers on from the sidelines, while waiting for his turn.

Take a look at this country. Count the suicides. Look at the father who fed his children refuse from the trash bin of a restaurant and cried as he watched them die. Look at the senator who shakes the grimy hands of her constituents and calls herself a middle-class single mother with a P42-million net worth – not even counting the Forbes Park home she failed to declare. Look at the billions in corruption. Look at the arrogance of the generals. Look at the woman buried in a cement-filled drum. Look at the presidential son crowing from his perch in the House of Representatives, laughing at the man who says he will not allow Ms Arroyo to continue on with her shenanigans in his own backyard. And so he should laugh. After all, so did Goliath.

This is where the story begins.

Bello calls it “a normal human craving,” the desire “to challenge a strong opponent.” It is a craving that perhaps Bello is missing, along with a large number of the House of Representatives – theirs is a craving to attach themselves to power.

And yet Bello is wrong. It is not a desire to fight against a Goliath that drives people behind David. It is the same candle-lit support that pushed a Catholic priest into power over the heads of dynasties. It’s this odd notion called hope, persistent in spite of the awareness that this man may just be another Arroyo: brought to power on the shoulders of a hopeful nation, only to put on her hob-nailed boots. People will pay for his placards, will walk in his rallies, will torch the effigies and start online campaigns, will drop their last twenty into a mayonnaise can for a man who offers a possibility of something better than this.

Perhaps this is what David knows, what Joseph Campbell once said so eloquently when he spoke of the path of heroes. We have not even to risk the adventure alone. The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path. “And where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world.”