If his speech in India is an indication of the sobering and education of a president, then some of these criticisms may be put to rest. President Obama unequivocally embraced the power of free trade and open markets, crediting those forces for Delhi's success. Ironically, as he is rightfully criticized at home for growing the government sector, he even made a connection between India's unshackling of its market from state control and its high growth rates. Possibly for first time in his presidency, as the Wall Street Journal's Bret Stephens pointed out, Obama stated that democracy itself is the target of terrorists. He also pushed for closer defense ties to help check China's military power and keep the Indian Ocean safe and secure.

While in Asia, then, Obama does not sound like a president ambivalent about free trade or free markets, the value of democratic allies or the continued need for military power to keep the world safe.

He is now in Indonesia and will continue on to Japan and South Korea. Indonesia was a Cold War ally ruled by a succession of anti-communist dictators. And it received substantial American support mostly motivated by Washington's Cold War policy. But Jakarta is now a Muslim-dominated democracy with a real chance for sustained success. While credit goes to the Indonesians themselves, the United States certainly played a role in Indonesia's transformation by providing economic and security aid and occasionally prodding its leaders to reform.

The same is true in Japan and South Korea. Obama is visiting allies whose success is inextricably tied to the very American policy that is criticized by the particular intellectual world of which Obama is a product. While that policy was never perfect--Indonesians and South Koreans had to endure their share of autocratic rule and corruption--Washington helped make those countries better off than they otherwise would have been. How? Washington encouraged its allies to join the liberal international system that post-World War II America created, pushed for democratic change and provided a strong military guarantee.

Obama's critics certainly have a point about the president's philosophical predilections. But as he may be learning during his sojourns to Asia, it is one thing in the abstract (or as a professor in Hyde Park) to question American exceptionalism, its leadership in free trade, or whether or not its overwhelming power is "imperial." But as a president traveling to an Asia where liberal values and American strength have made--and will continue to make--the difference between security and chaos, the academic debate of which he was once a part, becomes, well, academic. In a part of the world where military power still matters, and where China is straining the liberal system, Obama is put in the somewhat incongruous position of reassuring Asia that U.S. exceptionalism is here to stay: Our leadership is necessary to defend our friends and our (and their) principles. Maybe in the end Asia will change Obama.

Dan Blumenthal is a resident fellow at AEI.