The 2008 election cycle was endless, at times exhausting, and often exhilarating. It had no shortage of surprises, twists, and turns. Before it starts to recede in our rear-view mirror, let us take stock of some of the lessons that we learned from it.

1) The pollsters were right. Before I get to the accuracy of the public polls, let me toot my own horn for a moment, and remind readers of my own projection from the previous blog entry:

...here is my fearless prediction for 2008. Obama will win the popular vote 53% to 45%, with the remainder going to Ralph Nader and Bob Barr...The final electoral result will be Obama 353, McCain 185.

The final vote total was Obama 52%, McCain 46%. As Maxwell Smart would say, "Missed it by that much!" In terms of the electoral vote, the count now stands at 349 for Obama, to 163 for McCain. Once you award Obama North Carolina's 15 votes (he currently holds a narrow lead) and award McCain Missouri's 11 electoral votes (he currently has a narrow lead), the final tally becomes Obama 364, McCain 196. What that means is that out of the 50 states, I called only one state wrong: Indiana, which Obama won 50% to 49%. Since my arm is aching from patting myself on the back, let's look at the professional pollsters:

The final realclearpolitics.com average of all the professional polls was Obama by 7.6%. Obama actually won by six per cent. With all the tricky variables at play--new voters, young voters, early voters, African-American voters, weather issues--the pollsters have good reason to feel proud. That is an excellent result. Particularly noteworthy among the pollsters was the Pew Research Poll, which called the election at 52-46, and for the second straight presidential cycle, nailed it perfectly. Rasmussenreports.com also called the race perfectly, at 52-46. An honorable mention must be given to the CNN Opinion Research Poll, which forecast a 53-46 result.

People love to bash the pollsters when they're wrong, accusing them of incompetence. They also love to bash the pollsters when they're right, accusing them of sucking all the romance out of politics. In this election cycle, the pollsters get nothing but serious props from me.

2) Our voting process is a disgrace. In the presidential campaign of 2000, had either Gore or Bush won handily in Florida, no attention would have been paid to the atrocious "butterfly ballot" in West Palm, the punch-card voting system with all its hanging chads, nor the problem of voters being illegitimately purged from the rolls. It was the closeness of the race that magnified these issues. Conversely, Obama's comfortable victory in this election has hidden the fact that our election process is still in a shambles, with intolerable lines, non-uniform procedures throughout the country, machines that break down, large numbers of votes that can't be recounted because there is no paper trail, and uneven distribution of machines that disfavor and burden poor communities.

Can somebody please explain to me why designing a voting system that works is so damned complicated? After all, every day millions of people use ATM machines. You walk up to the machine and it asks you, do you want $20, $40, or $60? You then make a choice from these "candidates," it completes the transaction, and produces a paper record of your decision. Millions of these transactions are carried out, error-free, every day. If people had concerns that the transactions were not secure, or that they would be recorded inaccurately by the bank, the system would collapse immediately. For decades, it has worked smoothly. Why on earth can't this same technology be replicated for elections?

Some analysts have suggested that paradoxically, early voting may have had the effect of actually lowering voter participation. This is because many people who observed three hour waits during the early voting period, may have become fearful about going on election day. The Atlanta Journal Constitution suggests that this dynamic occurred in Georgia:

It's possible that the 4- to six-hour lines many voters epxerienced during advance voting scared some people away from the polls on Tuesday, some country officials said. Both Fulton and Gwinett Counties said they saw an early push of voters on Election Day, but lunchtime and after work crowds never materialized. "Could it be that people were afraid of the long lines they saw? said Gwinnett County spokesman Joe Sorenson."We definitely expected the polls to be full all day long."

It is estimated that once all the votes are counted, voter participation will be at 64% in the 2008 election, the highest percentage since William Howard Taft beat William Jennings Bryan exactly a century ago in 1908. Surely, however, we can do better than 64%.

3) How (not) to pick a vice-president. Much has already been written about the strange process by which John McCain picked Sarah Palin: He had met her only twice, and there was virtually no vetting of her before the choice. Robert Draper offers an anecdote in his article in the New York Times Magazine that shows just how bizarre and impulsive the choice of Sarah Palin was:

After that first brief meeting, [top McCain advisor Rick] Davis remained in discreet but frequent contact with Palin and her staff — gathering tapes of speeches and interviews, as he was doing with all potential vice-presidential candidates. One tape in particular struck Davis as arresting: an interview with Palin and Gov. Janet Napolitano, the Arizona Democrat, on “The Charlie Rose Show” that was shown in October 2007. Reviewing the tape, it didn’t concern Davis that Palin seemed out of her depth on health-care issues or that, when asked to name her favorite candidate among the Republican field, she said, “I’m undecided.” What he liked was how she stuck to her pet issues — energy independence and ethics reform — and thereby refused to let Rose manage the interview. This was the case throughout all of the Palin footage. Consistency. Confidence. And . . . well, look at her. A friend had said to Davis: “The way you pick a vice president is, you get a frame of Time magazine, and you put the pictures of the people in that frame. You look at who fits that frame best — that’s your V. P.”

It is this kind of sophomoric thinking that led to the disaster that was Sarah Palin. Only now that the election is over, are we learning the full story of just how dysfunctional Palin was. FOX News reported yesterday that she had repeated blow-ups and temper tantrums, and thought that Africa was a country rather than a continent. Further, a staffer who leaked information supportive of her was fired, then rehired, to avoid publicity. Other outlets are reporting that her shopping spree was far greater than originally reported:

According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent “tens of thousands” more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as “Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast,” and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.

But the real problem with Sarah Palin is the same one that she would face in 2012: She's not very bright. Palin's problem was not one of experience, it was one of intellect. Who in their right mind would babble incoherently to Katie Couric that they had an understanding of Russia because Vladmir Putin flew over Alaskan air space? From the first day of her introduction in Dayton, Ohio, Palin was little more than Dan Quayle with lipstick and panty hose.

There is a simple but profound lesson to be drawn from the choice of Sarah Palin: When picking a vice president, imagine them being interviewed for a full hour on Meet the Press. If the image doesn't work, strike that individual from the list immediately. The notion that Palin was ready for the presidency, but not ready for Meet the Press, was one of the most preposterous ideas of the campaign.

4) Miscellaneous. A few quick notes. As inspiring as Obama's victory gathering in Grant Park was, I was a little disappointed, for two reasons. First, Obama's tone seemed jarringly somber for such an upbeat occasion. Likewise, it was disappointing to me that when they cued the music at the end, Stevie Wonder, a staple of the Obama campaign, was nowhere to be heard. I think that the Obama team forgot that the Grant Park audience was there not to hear a ponderous speech; they were there to celebrate the election with a great party! And no scene would have been more perfect than 100,000 people dancing while Stevie Wonder sang that Obama's election was now "Signed, Sealed, Delivered."

Finally, I suspect that I am only one of thousands of people who would stop at various points during the campaign and say to themselves, "God, I wonder what Tim Russert would say about that," or "I wish Tim Russert were here to see that." Russert's absence changed the campaign season in ways both big and small. His loss was yet another bittersweet reminder to all of us how life moves on even after the most talented among us have gone away. Rest in peace, Tim.