Political Kool-Aid.

DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE John Kerry recently published a list of 200 chief executive officers and other top corporate officials he says support him. His obvious implication was that the nation's CEOs as a whole believe he should be president.

He must be drinking too much electric Kool-Aid. The people he named tended to be located on either the West or East Coast, and they're concentrated in finance, technology and entertainment. They are very fine people, but there is a whole lot of country between New York and California (and a few other industries as well).

Our CEO Confidence Index, a monthly survey that produced 358 responses from our readers across the U.S. in August (page 14), paints a very different and, we believe, more accurate picture. On all of the top issues facing the United States, CEOs do not believe that Kerry has better answers than incumbent George W. Bush for any of them. It's clear that CEOs as a group distrust the candidate who used the term "Benedict Arnold CEOs" and his vice presidential candidate, John Edwards, who also engaged in CEO-bashing.

It should also be clear to Bush, however, that CEOs are not a happy lot. He's also drinking too much Kool-Aid if he thinks all CEOs are pleased with his leadership. From the comments our readers make, it seems there is a solid bloc of CEOs who will support Republican candidates at all times. But another part of the CEO base, whether Republican or not, is distressed over Bush's economic management and America's international standing. They are worried about health care costs, malpractice and class-action lawsuits, rising regulation and continued poor education. There is also a schism among CEOs regarding globalization partly based on size: Large companies obviously are taking full advantage of global markets, but many smaller and medium-sized companies find themselves on the receiving end of brutal competitive pressures.

So our message to politicians is stop drinking your own Kool-Aid, of whatever variety, and start listening to the voices of American CEOs. They are the people who make decisions about whether new factories should be built, or not, and whether more people should be hired, or not. No amount of posturing on the campaign trail will alter that central reality.