Many have remarked on Barack Obama’s weak finish in his primary race against Hillary Clinton. During the second half of the Democratic primary contest he lost seven of thirteen contests and lost the popular vote to Hillary by half a million votes. But why? How did he go from untouchable to unimpressive?

Part of the answer lies in his opponent — who got a whole lot better. Clinton figured out the right image: a mix of feminist icon, vulnerable underdog, policy wonk and little guy champion. She jabbed and weaved and picked up on her opponent’s errors and thrived off media bias. She counterpunched her way to success.

And the rest of the answer lies in Obama. Remember, he had never had an effective opponent in his entire political career, excepting Bobby Rush in his only unsuccessful race. And when confronted with an attacking opponent he did not do all that well. He groused about debate questions, he whined about the media and his team insisted he was inevitable so it did not matter.

Now some might say that this was the period when all the bad news came out — Reverend Wright, Father Pfleger, and Bittergate — and this confluence of events and revelations cannot be duplicated again. Accepting for a moment that there is no comparable new information as harmful as Reverend Wright, for example, there still are lessons to be learned for the general election.

First, newness wears off and Obama lacks a compelling, deeper message. The Agent of Change, New Politics, Turn the Page mantras are by now old hat and can’t really be trotted out as great, innovative themes. They are used catch words, trite even. But Obama’s next or more substantive level of messaging was far less uplifting and compelling: “I am not George W. Bush.” True enough, but not something about which to write a rock video.

Second, Obama does not like being pressured or pushed. He wants to eat his waffle, he wants the criticisms to be just so and he wants the media to be seen (well not even seen sometimes), but not heard.

Third, he is less comfortable and adept at running right than running left. When forced to explain he really does love religious and gun-owning America or to sound hawkish on foreign policy he is simply less comfortable and less believable, in large part, because of his own past words and positions. And in trying to reverse course he does damage to his New Politician bona fides.

Finally, he does well at 10,000 feet soaring above the crowd with grandiose rhetoric and less well on the gritty details. Obama only became a one-man gaffe machine when forced to talk about specifics (even his own family history), and he doesn’t impress many with his command of detail.

So does any of this portend trouble for Obama for the general election? It might. The McCain camp is already putting Obama on the defensive on foreign policy and pressuring him to explain flip-flops as he moves to the political center. And certainly his ideological extremism is fodder for a general election race where key swing voters may regard him as too liberal.

But much depends on Obama himself. Can he recapture the effervescent atmosphere which pervaded his campaign and all the coverage before most people knew about Reverend Wright? Can he steer the conversation from the mundane to the lofty, or alternatively show some needed policy rigor and heft, effectively rebutting the doubts about experience? If he can’t do all or most of these, McCain may have as much success in the general election as Clinton did in the second half of her race. And even better, he won’t be miles behind in delegates to make Obama’s errors essentially immaterial.