If elected, Barack Obama will be the first truly independent President of modern times without a large debt of gratitude to big business and financiers. For the nearly two grueling years of campaigning, he is carried aloft by millions of ordinary people and financed for the most part by contributions of less than $100. His debt is to the people.

Obama has already made history not because he is black but because he has signposted an inspiring electoral process truly based on people’s involvement. He has clearly demonstrated that a politician does not have to sell his soul to big money.

He may or may not succeed as President but there is a real and profound reason for hope. He will be the first US politician at any level who is not in moral or financial obligation to big money, big business, aggressive religion, powerful labor unions or feisty non-governmental groups.

Even among Democrats, he is in hock neither to the liberals nor the traditional establishment. His beliefs may be left, centrist or right at times depending on the issue, but he is sold out or subject to no specific sphere of influence.

Some may perceive this as Teflon Obama on whom nothing sticks because he is committed to nothing in particular. Yet if he wants, he can be a truly independent actor taking decisions on the merits of each issue. Hopefully, he is such a man of character rather than one afraid to take decisions.

This is an extraordinary situation. America is fighting one global war – against terrorism — and two regional wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is shaken by nearly two years of economic upheavals rising to the current tsunami.

Yet the little $100 people have not given up. They see something fresh and promising in a man who breaks the mold of national politics and did not allow the Democratic and Republican women and men of power to dent their vision.

The hope that Obama offers to the world’s overwhelming majority oppressed by semi democratic and non-democratic regimes does not arise from his person but from the persistence of his supporters. Those people are making Obama. He did not step forward a hero to homage like John McCain.

Obama may never have administered thousands as claimed by Sarah Palin but his campaign machines are masterworks of efficacy. They consistently make correct judgments about how to motivate and mobilize people. He seems to be getting more for each dollar spent than his rivals in terms of work done for him.

From the start, Obama ran a very contemporary campaign that created innovations in almost every aspect of networking, fund raising, mobilizing people and keeping them informed through a new kind of personalized communication. He also used traditional means in a new way. Meetings, debates, TV advertising and radio broadcasts avoided exploiting populist artifices like appealing to the lowest denominator, innuendos and mudslinging.

He may not have been clear on many points of his policy agenda or who he is and his beliefs. But he was clearer than pull-no-punches Hilary Clinton and Bill as well as the formidable Republican war machines of McCain.

He outspent his rivals at every stage with money mostly from people who believe in him and not from those who make down payments on future favors. Influential endorsements, especially those of the Kennedys and Colin Powell came after mature reflection and not just Party affiliation.

Does all of this foretell an effective President? Perhaps not. At first, George Bush seemed a man of character committed to compassionate conservatism and humility in foreign policy. It turns out those were just words he recited in speeches to dupe listeners.

Obama talks well and could in action be vapid like Bush. Even so, he has shown that there are people in America so hungry for fresh air that they are willing to take a risk. That deserves appreciation. Let’s hope his thoughts are his own, not those of glib speech writers and pollsters.