John McCain went on CNBC this morning to argue -- once again -- that the key to reviving the economies lies with keeping taxes under control, especially the capital gains tax. The Arizona Republican yet again accused Democrat Barack Obama of being a tax-and-spend liberal, the type of boogeyman that would send shivers down the spine of most CNBC viewers.

And you know what? These tactics are failing miserably. Polls indicate that baring any huge cataclysmic event, Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States. According to Bloomberg News, McCain "goes into the campaign's final weekend a bigger underdog than any victorious candidate in a modern election."

John McCain has made several unexpected moves during his campaign. For instance, he picked Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his vice president. After an initial surge of support, her charming personality has given way to revelations about her lack of familiarity with the issues and Troopergate -- which led a bipartisan committee to conclude that she violated an Alaskan law prohibiting abuse of power. Now McCain may be questioning whether this maverick move hurt him more than it helped.

McCain also decided to suspend his campaign last month to deal with the financial crisis. Coincidentally, this decision came just a few days before McCain was to debate his opponent during a week when he was down in the polls. As it turns out, McCain resumed his campaign in time for the debate but without fixing the crisis. Did this maverick move strengthen McCain's image as a strong, effective leader?

At the end of a week in which the S&P 500 fell over 18%, more than it ever has in any previous week in history, some in the Republican party are questioning whether McCain's campaign is functioning as well as it could. Former Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney, has suggested that what McCain needs is a "broad vision of how he would lead the country through the economic crisis," according to the New York Times. This comment suggests a maverick move that McCain could take to revive his chances: replace Palin with Romney.

Republican John McCain has failed to convince the majority of Americans that Barack Obama is a tax-and-spend liberal who lacks the intestinal fortitude to face our country's enemies. In a show of desperation, the Arizona Republican and his running-mate Sarah Palin are now trying to link Obama with former Weathermen leader William Ayers, even though the New York Times and other news organizations have pointed out that the two men knew each other casually. That's why tonight's debate in Nashville is critical.

McCain, who is favored by many investors, is facing some pretty daunting odds. According to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 49 percent of voters said they would vote for Obama compared with 43 percent for the Arizona senator. That's up from a two-point advantage two weeks ago and mirrors other polls, according to the Journal. To be fair, the survey does have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points. Obama has wiped away McCain's lead with independent voters.

Investors should not underestimate the anger in the hearts of voters. The credit crisis has wiped out tens of billions of dollars in value to the retirement nest eggs of the American people. Most people don't understand why the government needed to extend a $700 billion lifeline to the financial services industry. They become even angrier when three former chief executives of American International Group Inc. (NYSE: AIG) blame one another like a bunch of two-year-olds for the firm's collapse. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropping below 9,500 scares them even further.

It is against this backdrop we are holding this election. Obama has been able to convince voters, including this one, that he can deliver tax relief for the middle class. But Democrats should not rejoice quite yet. McCain excels at these town hall meetings. Moreover, some of Obama's support in polls comes from people who are too embarrassed to admit that they don't want to vote for an African-American candidate.

Americans crave leadership during these times of economic crisis. Since Wall Street has failed to provide, it's unfortunately up to our elected officials.

Much of the focus in tonight's vice presidential debate will be on whether Democrat Joe Biden or Republican Sarah Palin says anything stupid. Odds are fairly good that one or both of them will stick their foot in their mouths in front of millions of TV viewers.

Though I am a political junkie, I am hoping that tonight's festivities are gaffe-free. The economy is in such a horrible state that Democrats and Republicans have to raise above partisan politics. In particular, they need to do something to address the heart of the problem -- the millions of people facing foreclosure. Many of them are there because they purchased homes they could not afford. I have heard all of the talk of letting the market correct itself and of moral hazard. That's simply not good enough.

I find it difficult to believe that the U.S. government lacks the resources or the know-how to figure out which homeowners should be helped and which should be left on their own. Why is it so impossible for the U.S. Congress to include some relief in the $700 billion bailout to Wall Street for homeowners? Housing advocates and some bankruptcy judges are arguing that judges should have the power to change the terms of mortgage contracts for people who have sought protection from their creditors. That seems like a sensible idea to me.

Unfortunately, I am not expecting much substantive talk about the economy tonight. Palin, the governor of Alaska, is being kept away from the press after making a fool of herself in some recent interviews. The Tina Fey caricature of her as a loudmouth hick appears to be taking hold. Polls indicate that most Americans believe she is not qualified to be president. John McCain is the only one who seems to think otherwise.

This morning markets in Asia fell about 4% -- a relatively muted response to the 7% drop in the Dow Monday. Should we trust our increasingly fragile global financial system to the 73-year old gambler who claimed a victory in yesterday's failed vote on the bailout bill? One poll suggests that the answer is no.

A September 29th Gallup poll found that Americans have the least trust in the Administration's ability to handle this financial crisis and the most in Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), 47. Here is the percentage of Americans who approved of how various people were handling the economic crisis:

• Barack Obama (46%)
• Democratic congressional leaders (39%)
• John McCain (37%)
• Republican congressional leaders (31%)
• Hank Paulson and George Bush (28% each)

Senator McCain, a former POW, gambled on taking money from corporate interests, on appointing Sarah Palin as vice president, and on choosing Phil "Americans are Whiners" Gramm as his chief economic advisor -- the same guy whose bill to deregulate the Credit Default Swap (CDS) market helped get us into this financial catastrophe.

Our national decision is less than six weeks away.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter.

If John McCain wants my vote he must dump Sarah Palin and fast. Judging by the latest polls showing Barack Obama moving ahead and gaining traction, I'm not the only one that feels this way. The outcome of the election is key to investors worried about a range of issues including the $700 billion federal bailout of Wall Street.

Obama may lack the experience I would hope to see in a presidential candidate but to quote a friend and fellow McCain supporter "Sarah Palin is an idiot and the only way she should be allowed in the White House is if she buys a tour ticket." This is not a unique sentiment given the Sarah Palin must go stance taken by conservative columnist Kathleen Parker of the Los Angeles Times. She says her cringe reflex is being exhausted.

I do not like Obama's proposals on capital gains taxes, a windfall oil profits tax, new government programs and several other issues, but the idea of Palin being second-in-command is a joke. And speaking of jokes, if I have misjudged, and McCain and Palin win the election, then Oprah will be surpassed as the wealthiest female in the entertainment industry. The new titan will be 30 Rock and former Saturday Night Live star Tina Fey who will be racking up fat paychecks based on the never ending material supplied by Palin.

Earlier this month I posted that John McCain may have made a mistake in selecting Sarah Palin. Now it turns out that the National Review agrees with me.

Katherine Parker argues that while Palin has a pleasant personality, she is "out of her league." Parker believes that her interviews with Katie Couric, Charlie Gibson, and Sean Hannity reveal a candidate who probably could not handle the job of president if she were required to take it.

Or as Parker wrote, "it is increasingly clear that Palin is a problem. Quick study or not, she doesn't know enough about economics and foreign policy to make Americans comfortable with a President Palin should conditions warrant her promotion."

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, who has made the economy a focal point in his campaign, is slipping in the polls as the popularity of opponent John McCain surged after his selection of the Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running-mate.

Now Obama and his supporters are hoping that their support for a second economic stimulus -- worth about $50 billion -- will grab the attention of voters fascinated by Palin, the moose-hunting hockey mom conservative firebrand. That's going to be a challenge.

Voters now are focused on Palin. They are gobbling up every detail about her life -- The Bridge to Nowhere (which she actually supported for a while), her baby with Down's Syndrome, her pregnant teenage daughter, whether she wanted to ban books from the local library. The list is endless. The McCain campaign is fueling interest in "Sarah Barracuda" by keeping her away from the media. This week, Palin is supposed to sit down with Charlie Gibson of ABC News. More interviews will follow though apparently not with Oprah Winfrey.

Democrats, including this one, are betting that once Palin is no longer the flavor of the week voters will move onto more pressing issues such as the economy (and, of course, "American Idol"). The economy is in terrible shape. The federal budget deficit is soaring and unemployment is at record levels. Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers endorsed the second stimulus plan today in testimony before Congress.

Amidst all of the talk of hockey moms, jabs at Democrat Barack Obama, and media bashing, there was not much discussion of the weak economy at this week's Republican National Convention.

In fact, the Republican gathering was notably short on talk of the main issue on the minds of voters. Sure, there was "drill baby drill," but is that really an economic policy? Can Americans drill their way out of the credit crisis? Can we drill our way out of the housing slump? Can we drill our way to prosperity?

No less of a flaming liberal than CNBC's Larry Kudlow took note.

"As we head into the closing night in St. Paul, there has so far been no reference to the weak economy," Kudlow said on the network's blog before John McCain's acceptance speech last night. "There has been no economic-recovery message and no growth message."

Interestingly, the Republican platform contained language inserted by economic conservatives rejecting the Bush administration's rescue of Bear Stearns Cos., and possible bailouts of Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE), according to Bloomberg News. The document purposely did not mention the credit crunch because delegates were afraid that any solution that they would offer might make things worse, Bloomberg says. The GOP's embrace of free trade may sell well on Wall Street, but it won't win votes on Main Street where workers are fearful of their jobs being shipped to lower-cost countries overseas.

No wonder the GOP did not say much on the economy.

Most Americans are suffering because of high gas prices, a volatile stock market and plunging home prices. Though technically the economy may be strong and may not even be in a recession, most people and businesses believe they are worse off than they were a year ago.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is about to enter the "No Spin Zone."

The Illinois senator is due to be interviewed by Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, host of the "The O'Reilly Factor," on Thursday, the final night of The Republican National Convention, according to TVNewser.com. I am sure executives at Fox parent company News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) were high-fiving each other when that interview was secured. The clash between the suave Obama and the bellicose O'Reilly will make for interesting television. It will be like a car accident on the highway that people can't help themselves from gawking at.

Maybe Obama views it as a chance to show his supporters that he is not afraid of O'Reilly, who is a pussy cat compared with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. It's also quite a contrast to the strategy of Republican John McCain, who is keeping the media at an arm's length. His campaign even canceled an interview the candidate had scheduled with CNN's Larry King because it did not like the tough questions anchor Campbell Brown asked its spokesman about the qualifiicaitons of his running-mate Sarah Palin.

Both the Democratic and Republican conventions have been a dream come true for the cable news channels. More people tuned into CNN, which is owned by Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX), for Obama's acceptance than for Fox, MSNBC and the broadcast networks. The address got more viewers than the American Idol final, the Oscars, or the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.

Fox, though, continues to attract more viewers overall, especially during the Republican get-together in St. Paul. General Electric Co.'s (NYSE: GE) MSNBC is gaining viewers too, though some may be curious to see if its feuding on-air personalities will break into a fist fight. All three of the cable news networks are raking in major bucks from those annoying 30-second TV spots that are an unfortunate part of American political life.

A winner has already emerged from the Obama-O'Reilly confrontation before a single punch has been thrown: News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch. The media baron lusts for the power to set the nation's political agenda. Come Thursday night, that's exactly what he will be able to do.

This charming pic-toon of moderation comes from one of my talented long time friends, Ron Overmyer, who has allowed me to share it with our readers. He does a weekly email blast and this is one of his tamer commentaries, one that might give us pause to consider what it means to be objective.

I thought I would take a moment to shout out to any moderates in the audience and say that I too have worried that some of my colleagues may have sacrificed their reputations for objectivity by writing some posts that could be viewed as borderline paid political announcements. Some readers have quipped that this should be included in the disclosure. However, on the occasion that this is true, it is usually so blatant that I would characterize such disclosure as redundant.

Several of my posts contain political commentary but I think our posts should be about investing, not swaying voter opinion. I especially avoid one-sided rationalizations that appear to have a specific agenda -- although I readily admit that on occasion the dividing line may be very fine indeed.

I still have not made up my mind about the upcoming election because I find some merit in the positions of each candidate. But to me the real question on our site remains: where do you put your money in the case of either candidate's success?

Since Friday's surprise announcement that John McCain picked Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his VP, numerous unpleasant facts have emerged which may make McCain regret his hasty choice. And since she has not been officially nominated by the Republican convention, it's not too late for McCain to pick Karl Rove favorite Mitt Romney instead.

Here are some of the reasons that McCain should reconsider his decision:

• Hearbeat away. She has had very little experience governing and none with foreign policy. This would be fine if McCain was in robust good health. Unfortunately, that is not the case. She could actually become President and it is far from obvious that she has the most executive experience among all the potential VP candidates that might need to step in if McCain could no longer do the President's job.
• No longer a shoe-in for Evangelical vote. She was strongly supported by the Evangelical wing of the Republican party due to her religious beliefs and her decision to keep her fifth child after she learned it would have Down syndrome. But with her 17-year old daughter having a child, some might question how strongly Palin believes in abstention until marriage.
• Corruption concerns. It is not clear whether McCain knew that Palin was under investigation for firing a public safety commissioner who refused to fire her brother-in-law. And did he know that she denied involvement with lobbyists in an interview with Maria Bartiromo, even though a TransCanada lobbyist played a central role in getting a $500 million subsidy for that Canadian company to build a gas pipeline she was pushing?

Yesterday I speculated that McCain picked Sarah Palin as his VP over the objections of his advisers. I thought that McCain -- who prides himself on fighting corruption in politics -- somehow saw himself in her. But both politicians have experience with the very thing they pride themselves on fighting.

In the case of McCain, his efforts to rid politics of the corrupting influence of corporate money followed his protection of Charles Keating who was securing a real estate deal for his wife, Cindy. The bankruptcy of Keating's S&L cost taxpayers $3.4 billion. More recently former McCain Finance Chair Tom Loeffler, a lobbyist for French company EADS, parent of Airbus, helped it and Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC) to prevail in a $35 billion competition for airborne refueling Tankers in February over Boeing Inc. (NYSE: BA) before the General Accounting Office (GAO) concluded that the process was flawed.

Alaska's governor, Sarah Palin, knows a thing or two about lobbyists. The New York Times reveals that she won that post after taking on bribery charges from the oil industry against politicians -- her attack against such corrupting influences helped her prevail over former Alaska governor, Frank Murkowski. That's why it came as a surprise to learn that as governor Palin employed a lobbyist for an energy company for which she procured $500 million in state subsidies so it could build a gas pipeline.

Shares of were trading near record highs when ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) started off the new year by announcing that it expected fourth quarter production results to exceed those of the third quarter. But it was good news/bad news for the company this past week.

The good news: The Wall Steet Journal reported that Conoco was now the front-runner to participate in a multiyear, $10 billion project to develop the Shah natural-gas field in Abu Dhabi, beating out such rivals as Occidental Petroleum (NYSE: OXY) and Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE: RDS.A). Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. had been expected to name a partner for the project last year, and oil companies have become frustrated by the delays. Abu Dhabi is trying to meet rising demand for natural gas, which has surged with the building of gas-fired power stations and desalination plants.

The bad news: The company's donation of $5 million to a local cancer center apparently did not impress Alaska state officials sufficiently to allow Conoco to go forward with its nonconforming proposal for a natural gas pipeline project in that state's North Slope. Conoco's proposal had requested that state taxes be fixed on the project for decades, which prompted Governor Sarah Palin to send Conoco a rejection letter. The rejection left TransCanada Corp. (NYSE: TRP) as the sole finalist for the project.

Conoco shares have fallen 5.96% since the beginning of the year, and closed Friday at $83.04.