Advanced democracies are fickle; bloggers in advanced democracies even more so. Those in the United States who write about their President have, since his departure on the most ambitious foreign tour of his presidency, been vexed by nothing so much as his decision to bow deeply before the Emperor of Japan. Former Vice-President Cheney, it turns out, stood firm and erect and shook the Emperor’s hand. Mr Cheney worked for an Administration that inflicted immeasurable damage on America’s global reputation. Mr Obama leads one that finds itself challenged on every front, but still has the potential to turn its initial promise of enlightened leadership in a multipolar world into reality.

Mr Obama’s decision to bow to Emperor Akihito says much of what the President’s critics should acknowledge about him. He is humble enough to defer to local custom, confident enough to know that such a gesture in no way diminishes America’s true strengths and wise enough to understand that after the Bush era the style of US foreign policy had to change as radically as its substance.

No significant concessions can be expected from Beijing, as Mr Obama flies there from Shanghai this evening to discuss an impossibly broad range of mutual interests, chief among them the Chinese currency. Washington maintains, rightly, that China’s policy of effectively pegging the yuan to the dollar artificially depresses the price of its exports and perpetuates global economic imbalances that could lead to repeated financial crises such as that of 2008. Yet reality has intruded. As America’s biggest creditor at a time of spiralling US deficits and debt, China has much to lose from a currency re-evaluation, and Mr Obama is in no position to demand one.

In Iran and North Korea, no spectacular disavowal of those countries’ nuclear ambitions is likely in the short term as a result of Mr Obama’s decision to respond to intransigence with flexibility. In Burma, no sudden release of Aung San Suu Kyi is expected simply because Mr Obama raised the subject of her house arrest with the Burmese leader at a summit meeting in Singapore. His regime has little to gain from concessions to its opposition, and a great deal to lose.

In Afghanistan, Mr Obama has no good options and his protracted deliberations over which, if any, of those so far presented to him has given his detractors no end of opportunity to accuse him of inexperience, naivety and indecision.

It is, therefore, worth remembering that this is a President of extraordinary intelligence and deep curiosity, with apparently boundless energy, an instinctive talent for collaboration and a rare willingness to risk new departures where old, failed policies have become mistaken for received wisdom. Like former President Clinton, but with more self-discipline, Mr Obama’s appetite for detail and complexity as well as broad political philosophy equips him for the decision making that goes with his job, even if it makes the process painful for observers.

This process should also be painful for the vested interests that any progressive leader must confront when he switches from campaigning to government. The US military is such an interest, and one of the myriad factors Mr Obama must consider before settling on an Afghan strategy, however much the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs would prefer him to ignore it, is the army’s natural demand for a role. President Kennedy faced down General Curtis LeMay, as well as Khrushchev, during the Cuban missile crisis. Mr Obama may hear echoes of those 13 tense days as he prepares to announce a new way forward in Afghanistan. He would be right to. His decisions are difficult and freighted with history, but it is too soon to say he is incapable of making the right ones.