First, a confession.

I have spent the past weeks totally obsessed with all things political. Polls, punditry, television, radio and yes, even an occasional peek at “The Daily Show” and “Saturday Night Live” have been the touchstones of my existence.

And now that the election is over, it’s almost time to get back to my full-time jobs – running a small business and writing about the tri-county economy.

But I can’t resist taking a look back at this memorable campaign, trying to divine some business lessons from the election of 2008. Here are a few of them:

• The candidate is salesman in chief. After all the policy wonks, experts and consultants weigh in, it is the candidate who has to go out and sell the voters. For all the doubts about his experience and his asssociates’, Barack Obama did a better job of selling his message than anybody else. Hillary Clinton came close to matching Obama after she found her “voice,” but McCain never really found a way to get out in front of the sales curve. In my view, having “Joe the Plumber” as your chief salesperson is not a winning strategy – we wanted to hear from McCain the Maverick.

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