While attending the IIABA's annual conference in Washington, D.C. on Friday, I saw one sign of Sen. Barack Obama's amazing popularity in the hyper-competitive bobblehead doll market.

In both the gift shop of the Big I's hotel, as well as at the National Airport stores, the shelves were bulging with bobblehead dolls of Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. John McCain, but there was not a single Obama bobblehead to be found.

“We can't keep him on the shelves,” the Big I hotel gift shop cashier confided to me. “As soon as we get a shipment in, they fly out the door in a day or two. We sell a few Hillary dolls now and then, but we can't give the McCain doll away–we're still working on the original shipment.”

It was the same story at the airport stores–plenty of Hillary and McCain dolls, but no Obamas anywhere! (However, one airport store was selling a “Hillary Clinton Nutcracker” that the proprietor says is fairly popular.)

Does this mean that Obama is a shoe-in to win the nomination, and then the White House? Of course not. It could just mean that Obama's supporters are more feverish for their man than are those backing Clinton and McCain. Or it could even mean that collectors (and those who peddle to them) believe that Obama's doll will be more valuable going forward, regardless of his fate in this political season.

But it is interesting, you have to admit!

One other political note: At our exhibit booth, we were handing out flyers for NU subscriptions. Totally by chance, our marketing director chose a postage stamp size past NU cover to illustrate the piece that featured none other than New York's former governor, Eliot Spitzer, popping out of the capitol building, with the headline: “Mr. Spitzer Goes To Washington.”

The marketing piece became something of a collector's item in its own right, with passersby getting quite a laugh out of the irony of it all. Indeed, Gov. Spitzer had been in Washington for his infamous tryst with a call girl to testify on Capitol Hill the next day about regulation of bond insurers in the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis.

You see, it all comes down to insurance, one way or the other!

Special Reports /

Obama Wins The 'Bobblehead' Poll

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