CFOs opt to stay the course with President Bush.

On a quarterly basis, FEI and Baruch College's Zicklin School of Business conduct the well-respected CFO Outlook Survey. The survey participants are U.S. chief financial officers across a wide spectrum of companies--small caps, mid-caps and large caps, publicly traded and privately held, crossing all major industry sectors, revenue strata and geographical locations.

This survey tends to get a lot of press attention--there are some questions that we have carried over for years--providing the ability to perform long-term trend analysis. However, for each survey we do try to add several questions that are of immediate relevance to our CFOs.

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This past June's survey was no different, targeting 355 CFOs across the U.S. whose only commonality was their title. But, overwhelmingly, they agreed on one thing: They want President George W. Bush to continue running the country for another four years.

The respondents ranked both President Bush and Sen. John Kerry across four key factors: the U.S. economy, homeland security, foreign policy and oil prices. In all four measures, corporate chief financial officers chose Bush over Kerry as the better leader.

In the area of homeland security--long understood to be Bush's strong suit--three-quarters of the CFOs responding to the survey rated him superior to Kerry. Less than 9 percent favored Kerry, and 16 percent saw no difference between the two men.

Although homeland security was Bush's highest-ranking area in the survey, he also strongly outscored Kerry on the U.S. economy, capturing more than two-thirds (69 percent) of the vote. Kerry took less than 15 percent, with 16 percent of respondents finding no difference.

Kerry's highest ranking was in the area of foreign policy, with one-third of respondents thinking he would be better than Bush. However, Bush won the day with 57 percent of CFOs preferring him. Fewer than 10 percent saw no difference on this issue.

Lastly, on oil prices, nearly half (48.6 percent) of corporate chief financial officers preferred Bush to Kerry, who had 13 percent of the vote. In this category, 38 percent of respondents felt there would be no appreciable difference between the two candidates on this topic.

What do these results tell us? Even given the known conservative bent of the majority of senior-level financial executives, which would presuppose a Republican being favored over a Democrat, Kerry's showing in the survey was unusually poor. Bush's numbers reflect the benefit he has received from the resurgent economy and the ongoing threat of terrorism.

Obviously, Kerry's proposed domestic agenda--including higher taxes for higher earnings and more government-supported health care--does not appear to sit well with our survey respondents. And in the contentious area of foreign policy, Bush's actions in Iraq and the alienation of some of our allies did not resonate strongly enough with CFOs to swing the pendulum away from the President and towards Kerry.

Another area where Bush has an edge over Kerry with respect to support by financial executives is tort reform. When Kerry selected John Edwards, a plaintiff's lawyer, as his running mate, he clearly alienated corporate America. I have written in this column before about the American justice system and how it threatens to undermine U.S. business. Forget principles-based accounting without significant reform. Under a Kerry administration, it is highly unlikely that much-needed reform would occur.

The stakes in the upcoming election are fairly high; however, as I write this column, the race is very close. It is likely that the next President will appoint as many as four new justices for the Supreme Court. These justices may be on the court through the 2030s!

As you read this, the election will be less than a month away. Will the choice of America's chief financial officers take the day? We shall see.

How The Two Candidates Rate

                       Bush Better      Kerry Better       No Difference

U.S. Economy             69.4%            14.4%              16.1%
Homeland Security        75.3%             8.5%              16.2%
Foreign Policy           57.3%            33.6%               9.1%
Oil Prices               48.6%            13.4%              38.1%