According to recent polling, Obama has narrowed the lead with Hillary considerably in Pennsylvania and has pulled ahead of her in North Carolina by a wide margin. While this may bring a smile to the lips of Obama supporters and party officials who want to bring an end to this divisive contest, for a little perspective on his rising stock, and as prudence would dictate, they would do well to consider the political environment in which Obama has ascended.

In the Democratic race for the nomination, the Gods have blessed Obama with an opponent who will go down as perhaps the worst presidential candidate in recent American political history. Her entire campaign was built on the chimera of inevitability. In the early days, she exhibited an overweening sense of entitlement: Democratic voters and party operatives were viewed as her vassals and were instructed to get on board the train before it left the station. Obama was dismissed as an upstart, not worthy of her attention.

Thus, when the Empress was revealed to have no clothes, her fall from grace was swift and hard. The precipitous decline in her fortunes was hastened by her once most reliable allies and enablers. For, as soon as Obama became a viable candidate through his string of primary victories, to the press, Hillary became radioactive, and they abandoned her with an alacrity that has put the Clintons in a state of stupefaction and bewilderment.

On the campaign trail Hillary is stiff, wooden, utterly predictable as she repeats with her monotone and with robotic predictability her utterly fraudulent campaign themes. How much excitement does someone with this ineradicable persona generate on the campaign trail? Think Adlai Stevenson in a pants suit. Ironically, on the stump, she very much resembles her one-time arch nemesis, Richard Nixon. Yet when Nixon lied in public, his face became visibly strained, contorted, indicative of a man, that whatever his flaws, possessed a conscience. When the Bosnian lie was exposed by incontrovertible evidence, Hillary continued with her brazen lie without missing a beat. Such pathological behavior exposed for all to see a disturbing and unprecedented ruthlessness and lust for power.

Since there are no ideological differences between Obama and Hillary, the contest has become a referendum on personality. In this regard, as the polls indicate, Obama could not have hand-picked a more feeble adversary.

Yet even though Hillary's position continues to erode, instead of exultation, there ought to be a deep foreboding within the Democratic Party for handing over the nomination to a doctrinaire liberal about whom the American public still knows very little. Over time, the blank tablet that has heretofore defined the Obama candidacy is starting to get filled in. The sketch that is emerging, at best, is unflattering, and at worst, is wholly inconsistent with the lofty assertions and central premise of his campaign.

Hillary is a palpable phony; yet, in a very different way, so too is Obama. The trick for his campaign is to try and bridge the ever-growing gap between the high-mindedness and transcendent rhetoric of his stump speeches and the reality of his resume — thin as it is — and his prior political history. He promised that his candidacy would embody a "new kind of politics" and indeed, during the early stages of the Democratic contest, Obama was extremely reluctant to openly criticize Hillary directly.

Obama has benefitted enormously by the good fortune of having an opponent that was fatally flawed as a presidential candidate. However, in the general election, his free-ride will be over. For all his grave shortcomings, McCain is very much the anti-Hillary: he is authentic and he has credibility. In short, don't expect the Obama rocket to continue its untrammeled trajectory in the general election. In fact, one could plausibly argue that he has already hit his apex in the Democratic contest against a severely flawed opponent and his trajectory, in a general election contest against McCain, will be downward.