查找字符串中最常见的字符

I found this programming problem while looking at a job posting on SO. I thought it was pretty interesting and as a beginner Python programmer I attempted to tackle it. However I feel my solution is quite...messy...can anyone make any suggestions to optimize it or make it cleaner? I know it's pretty trivial, but I had fun writing it. Note: Python 2.6I found this programming problem while looking