P-Noy said something interesting some days ago. For some time now, he had been hearing comments comparing him to Barack Obama. Sorry, not so, he said. He is just another Pinoy, heir to text scams, anarchic motorists, traffic and the daily aggravations of life in Metro Manila. Even if he has become the most powerful man in the country and the most eligible bachelor at that, which are not bad as perks go.

?For me, it?s the cause (I?ve been espousing). From the start of the campaign, I knew I lacked the charisma. That was clear to me. I was just the face of the aspiration and dreams of Filipinos. That was how I attracted support.?

The self-deprecating remarks have anti-hero written all over them. That has been P-Noy?s hallmark for some time, a refusal to go into heroic mode, a plea for the people to be less extravagant in their expectations, a projection of the leader as not being above, or too far above, the led. It?s all of a piece with his preference to not use sirens on the road, to use the Guest House instead of the Palace proper, to wear ordinary clothes, to take simple repasts, to oblige an audience with a song upon frenzied request. It?s all of a piece with a lifestyle given to simplicity.

None of this makes him unlike Obama.

At the very least, that is so because Obama himself has been a paragon of simplicity. I particularly liked that part earlier in his presidency when he and Vice President Joe Biden had a sudden craving for hamburger while on their way to Virginia. They had their motorcade take a detour and they went to the first hamburger joint they saw, called Ray?s Hell Burger. They themselves fell in line with the other customers, ordered at the counter and paid with cash from their pockets. Upon getting their orders, they repaired to a corner where they discussed affairs of state.

At the time that happened, this country was still under the clutches of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo who couldn?t step out of Malacañang without an armed escort. A far cry from the days when she was still a senator and trying to be the Nora Aunor of Philippine politics, which she tried to project by hanging around the watering holes of journalists. I used to see her in Remembrances in Malate and one time even in a hole-in-the-wall near Timog, swigging beer and arguing with reporters. I remembered the latter because a friend whispered to me he never realized how much her voice grated. As it turned out, it was more than her voice that would grate.

Obama, of course, is charismatic. He is at least the more gifted speaker, keeping audiences spellbound. Though while at that, P-Noy isn?t so bad either, he just has a different style?more folksy, conversational, straight-shooting. In any case, truth is the most eloquent oratory of all, as shown by Cory who froze the country into enraptured beguilement each time she spoke during the snap election, though she delivered her lines in a near-monotone.

But it is precisely in being the face of the dreams and aspirations of Filipinos that P-Noy is very much like Obama. Or indeed like his own mother. That is the one thing they all have in common. They were/are the face of the dreams and aspirations of their time and place.

Charisma alone could not have gotten Obama to the White House. Jesse Jackson was far more charismatic, and he was just one of Obama?s listeners on a chilly night in Chicago a couple of years ago, weeping unabashedly at the fulfillment of a dream, however vicariously. Quite simply Obama came at a time when the country so longed to be free from tyranny it had become sympathetic to everyone who felt that way, most of all the blacks of America. Their plight became the country?s plight, their struggle became the country?s struggle, their dream became the country?s dream.

The same was true of Cory, and the same was true of P-Noy. They came at a time when the country longed to be free, in Cory?s time from Marcos? tyranny and in P-Noy?s time from Arroyo?s own. P-Noy?s instinct to be one with the people and one of the people is no different from his mother?s. It is the other side of the coin of Cory being the face of the dreams and aspirations of her people.

With Cory, the battle cry was ?Hindi ka nag-iisa,? a battle cry raised by the led for their leader. You are not alone: Your pain for a husband who was slain is our pain for our friends and lovers who were ?salvaged,? tortured or taken in the night, never to be seen again. Your quest for justice is our quest for justice: for the end of a rule that has darkened our threshold, for the punishment of all those that have made our lives a living hell.

With P-Noy, well, he never raised the battle cry, ?Hindi kayo nag-iisa,? but he might as well have done so. His pitch has been subtler and quieter, intimated more by action than by slogan, pushed more by a series of propositions than by a single articulation. He did give it shape and form in his Inaugural Address, in the part where he asked people if they too had groaned under the yoke of oppression, not least by being forced to make way for the oppressors when they announced their coming with wang-wangs. It is the battle cry, however subdued, raised by the leader for the led. You are not alone: Your pain has been my pain, your deprivation has been my deprivation, your ordeal has been my ordeal. I too have suffered what you have suffered. I too long like you to be free.

By being terribly self-effacing, by refusing to use a government car at her successor?s inauguration, by simply being the face of the hopes and aspirations of her people, Cory was lavished with praise befitting a hero when she died. Well, she always believed the last shall be first and the first last. Who knows? Maybe Obama does, too. Maybe P-Noy does, too.

Sometimes, anti-heroes make the best heroes of all.