India's soft power has failed to use contemporary art or its living artists as a tool for cultural diplomacy. In all the euphoria of the Obama visit and the ramifications for everything from bilateral business deals, odes to Indian culinary excellence and Michelle's bazaar-style shopping, the one thing that was oddly missing was any reference to art.

It’s a colossal shame that presidential life has no magic rewind button, for if it did—and we could whirr ourselves back to June 2009—we’d have had Barack Hussein Obama skip Pharaonic old Cairo, city of the ghastly Hosni Mubarak and a tightly coiled hatred of the West, and deliver his first major speech to a Muslim nation in Indonesia...

President Obama arrives today in Indonesia, a country he knows well, where he lived for part of his childhood and is extremely popular. Indonesia is on the other side of the world, 12,000 miles from Washington, and most Americans know little about it. So they may not appreciate the importance of the president's visit as an opportunity to cement a closer relationship with an ally in the fight against Islamist extremism.

As he finally makes it to Jakarta, it's worth noting just how much Indonesia, the country that considers him a native son, loves all things Obama. Case in point: the Barack Obama reality show.

But invisible things such as oxygen, God and foreign affairs can still be consequential. And last week's election will have the scariest kind of influence on America's role in the world: massive and unclear.

Jakarta regards Mr. Obama as a local boy made good, and he remains extremely popular throughout Indonesia. But his last-minute postponements of three previously planned visits here have clearly sapped the enthusiasm surrounding his homecoming, even among his most ardent supporters.

Koreans, both individually and collectively, have lingering concerns about their country’s international image. Their national identity is blurred by the existence of two larger neighbors whose culture and history are better known to the world.

"Cultural revolution is the main source of the Islamic Republic of Iran's power," Deputy Head of the Joint Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Brigadier General Massoud Jazayeri said. "If we didn't enjoy such a soft power, enemies would not launch so many invasions and they would not do such a vast lineup against us," Jazayeri added.