A tale of two Presidents

Wall Street lies at the heart of New York's business district. The New York Stock Exchange and the Cocoa Exchange lie on it, and it is the hub of American finance capital. 'Wall Street' is synonymous with the US financial establishment.

On September 17, protesters began a sit-in at Zuccotti Park, close to Wall Street. The protest was inspired by the occupation of Cairo's Tahrir Square, which brought down the regime of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt.

The 'Occupy Wall Street' movement, initially ignored by the mass media, has made steady progress in the past three weeks - mainly due to the new electronic social media. It has in its turn spawned imitators across the United States and Canada.

These people were first and foremost protesting against corporate greed, which had caused thousands of people to lose their livelihood. They were also protesting against other things, including racism and foreign wars they did not believe in.

Economic crisis

The trade unions decided on Wednesday to back the protests. It had already been joined by thousands of ordinary people, including veterans of the Iraq War, as well as off-duty marines.

The protests mirror the widespread dissatisfaction felt by ordinary Americans at the status quo. The USA is badly affected by the three-year-old world economic crisis, with millions losing their jobs and hundreds of thousands losing their dwellings.

There is anger about the US $ 700 billion bank bailout of 2008 - after which the financial institutions most responsible for the economic slump rewarded their executives with massive handouts from the bailout money.

Popular opinion is that this money should have been used to help those whose mortgages were being foreclosed and to help boost employment. Foreclosure notices are hovering about the quarter of a million per quarter mark.

Unemployment rate

Officially, the unemployment rate is around 9 percent of the labour force. However, unofficially, it may be higher than 20 percent. A recent Gallup poll showed that it is the biggest concern of ordinary Americans.

A recent poll carried out by Harris showed that more than half of employees feared that the economic situation would affect their job situation. Nine out of ten of the unemployed seeking were gloomy on its effect on their search.

The protests are also being fuelled by growing dissatisfaction with the political establishment - which are felt to be siding with the 1 percent of super-rich against the 99 percent of ordinary people.

This position is underlined by the fact that lawmakers are making heavy weather of a proposal that would bring taxation on millionaires up to the same level as those with middle-level incomes. A poll conducted jointly by The Washington Post and ABC News released on Monday revealed that 79 percent of Americans disapprove of the political system. Only 14 percent said they approved of the performance of legislators.

Significantly, the approval rating for President Barack Obama is only 42 percent. This comes down to 35 percent when his handling of the economy is considered. This contrasts with his 69 percent approval rating immediately after taking office in January 2009.

Obama was elected at the end of eight years of Republican rule, figure-headed by President George W Bush. The Bush era had seen the country plunged into two foreign wars and ended with the economic meltdown.

The unpopular 2008 bank bailout came at the tail-end of Bush's term. Obama's electorate expected him to behave otherwise than the Republican administration. After all, he had campaigned on the slogan 'Change: Yes We Can'.

Obama promised to put an end to the unpopular foreign wars, to withdraw from Iraq and to win the war in Afghanistan. He promised to better the conditions of the bottom 40 percent of the population, particularly the 50 million without health insurance.

People-friendly policies

Yet, with the resources of the world's richest nation behind him, he has failed to deliver. The pull-out from Iraq is as far away as ever, while US forces are bogged down in Afghanistan. And he began a new adventure in Libya this year.

Instead of relying on the progressive forces within his own Democratic Party, Obama looked increasingly for bipartisan support, especially from the right wing Republicans. As a result his programme was derailed.

Faced with a continuing economic crisis on par with the Great Depression of 1933, he did not follow the example of his Democratic predecessor Franklin D Roosevelt, who put America back to work with people-friendly policies.

Instead he has looked more and more like Roosevelt's immediate predecessor, the unfortunate Republican Herbert Hoover - who refused to take interventionist measures for fear of upsetting the ideologues of laissez faire economics.

As a result he is seen more and more as a representative of the 1 percent and not the 99 percent. The degree to which Obama - who had criticised his predecessor over the torture of suspect - has been willing to stick to Bush policies was revealed this week.

Meagre resources

Officials confirmed the existence of a 'secret panel', which can order the assassination of US Citizens with no judicial oversight. They said that the panel ordered the killing of the American-born Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.

One cannot but compare Obama with President Mahinda Rajapaksa, the approval rating of whom was recently placed by an opinion poll at 91 percent.

The contrast between the positions of the two could not be more different. Mahinda managed to get into office by a very narrow margin, whereas Obama had a comfortable majority.

Obama, with the biggest and most modern military machine in the world was fighting some rag-tag guerrillas in distant lands. Mahinda, with a Third World army, faced probably the world's best-equipped and trained rebel force, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

Obama was blessed with the huge resources of the world's richest economy. His spending on the war in Iraq alone was four times greater per month than Sri Lanka's entire annual military budget.

The difference is that Mahinda had the courage of his convictions. Not only did he see to the end the conflict against the LTTE, he put what meagre resources the country could spare into uplifting the condition of ordinary people.

Unlike Obama, Mahinda put his reliance on the ordinary men and women who elected him to office, not on the elite. This is the secret of his success.