Business-minded voters have doubts about both candidates

FOR a short while in his early 20s, Barack Obama edited reports in New York for Business International, a publishing firm that was later bought by The Economist Group. He did not much like it, so he quit to become a community organiser. That was his only first-hand experience of business. John McCain has had even less, having spent his adult life as a pilot, prisoner-of-war and politician. Businesspeople might wonder if either candidate truly understands their worries.

Both men are happy to take money from businesspeople, and both praise enterprise in the abstract. But both also snipe at supposed corporate villains. Mr Obama spent his primary campaign railing against oil firms, irresponsible mortgage lenders and overpaid bosses who export American jobs. Mr McCain fulminates pointlessly about oil speculators, and once dismissed a Republican rival, Mitt Romney, a successful businessman, by sneering: "I led...not for profit but for patriotism." ...