After news broke that President Obama had won re-election, a well-educated Vietnamese woman told me about her husband’s theory: Obama won because of a backroom deal among America’s rival powerbrokers.

She seemed skeptical as I explained that, while there may be secret deals in politics everywhere, America’s presidential contest isn’t like that. It’s more like a giant, raucous sporting spectacle that plays out constantly with intense media attention, climaxing in great drama once every four years. Citizens root for their teams and boo the rivals. Debates can get heated, but as one friend put it on Facebook: “We’re just shakin’ our pom poms.”

Most of America, by a fairly slim margin, cheered for President Obama – and many who voted against him now cheer for him to succeed. The Hawaii-born president of African and European ancestry who spent some of his childhood in Indonesia is even more popular with people around the world. So I’m hoping Vietnamese and expat readers will consider this American’s take on why Obama was re-elected, and how that reflects important global issues.

Lesson One: They are women, hear them roar…

Out to dinner last Spring with expats from various corners of the globe, I was asked whether Obama would win re-election. There were two big reasons I said yes: First, Obama and Sen. John McCain split the male vote about evenly in 2008, but Obama still won the popular vote by a 9.4 million vote margin – essentially all female. Second, that very week, the big political story in America was about a famous radio pundit named Rush Limbaugh who had called a woman a slut and a prostitute simply for arguing that her tax-funded health insurance should cover the cost of birth control pills. Amazingly, Republican presidential candidates offered only the mildest of criticisms of Limbaugh. What were these men thinking?

The empowerment of women is a global trend for the better. In America, it would turn out that women would have several more reasons to reject Republicans – including the two white, male senate candidates who made mindboggling comments about rape and abortion. In the end, exit polling showed that women voters turned out big, accounting for 54% of the electorate – and 55% of them voted for Obama. They also helped elect a record number of women to the 100-member US Senate. For the first time, the Senate will have 20 female members (including its first openly gay member) – compared to just two only 20 years ago. Little wonder many people think Hillary Clinton will succeed Obama.

Lesson Two: Hear that funky music, white boys…

“Angry white males” is a phrase that became a staple of American politics in the early 1990s – a reaction to feminists, minorities and immigrants. Limbaugh personified the phenomenon. The power of the AWMs has receded but revived in part as a reaction to the rise of Obama – and at the extreme, it fed a paranoid, racist “birther” movement that questioned whether the President was really born in Hawaii. So it was not surprising that Obama’s rival, Mitt Romney, won a large strong majority of the white male vote (as well as a majority of white women.) But in addition to losing with the women overall, Romney also lost big with racial and ethnic minorities, and young voters in general. Latinos are the fastest-growing part of the electorate – and Obama took 71% of their vote. Asians are also growing fast – and Obama got 74% of their vote. Republicans are now reconsidering their anti-immigrant attitudes and polices. So this election was probably the last gasp of the angry white males – even if some anger endures.

Lesson Three: The climate, it is a-changin’…

In accepting his party’s nomination for the presidency, Romney even used climate change to mock President Obama, drawing a huge wave of Republican laughter as he talked about Obama having promised “to slow the rise of the oceans.”

Then, with the election just a few days away, Hurricane Sandy slammed into the eastern seaboard with unprecedented force. The rising, surging ocean devastated the New Jersey shore and low-lying parts of New York City. Despite a massive evacuation, more than 100 people were killed and damages were estimated as high as $100 billion. Now no one was laughing – certainly not Team Romney as they watched one of their own, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, lavish praise on President Obama for the federal government’s effective response. The storm made Obama look strong and Romney look small. More important, Hurricane Sandy may have awakened America to the fact that, yes, climate change is a very serious matter.

So I hope my Vietnamese friend understands that President Obama really wasn’t re-elected in a secret deal by powerful politicians. The decisive factors were the power of women, the power of cultural diversity, and the power of Nature.

And America, and the world, is better for it.