Two weeks ago, I knew John McCain to be a man that I was thinking about voting for. A lifelong democrat, some of my positions on certain issues, lean towards the middle ground. And I knew McCain to be a moderate, who even veered towards the liberal on some issues. I mean, come on, if Joe Lieberman, a former DEMOCRATIC candidate for VP could be on his REPUBLICAN short list for VP, how bad could he be?

Additionally, I had been a tad hesitant about the new Senator from Illinois, who, it seemed to me, just hadn’t been around long enough. In a previous election, I had voted for Governor Deval Patrick (now the governor of MA) and while I think he is certainly leading us in the right direction, I noticed him struggle during his first days in office. It took him a while to get into the mode of running a state. And while I respect the fact that new jobs take some getting used to, I need a president who is ready to lead from day one.

So...coming from that hesitation, while I WAS leaning towards voting democratic, I was certainly giving McCain a second (and third and fourth) look.

I would still be one of those 10% of voters who are undecided, if McCain was still acting like Senator McCain - but that candidate seems to have disappeared. In his place, is a robot that looks like John McCain but speaks like George W. Bush (or perhaps Karl Rove). His passion for living up to his ideals is gone. He is merely toting the party line. He is avoiding reporters, and their questions.

Sure this robotic McCain has come out swinging. The problem is, he is not swinging at those that have caused our economy to be in shambles and our country’s image to have plummeted in the International sphere. Instead, he’s swinging at the media and reporters who dare question him!

In all honesty, he’s starting to come off as a dictator. He wants people to vote for him because of his experience as a prisoner of war, and then to stop talking to him. His behavior indicates that he’ll tolerate no second guessing, no questioning, and no processing from the American people. He is going to make decisions (thought through or not), and we’re going to have to live with the outcomes. McCain is expecting blind faith from us. And I’m expecting that we’re too smart for that.

This whole shift in personality makes me wonder who is in charge. If McCain continues to insist that nothing has changed, then I would wonder if he is mentally stable. If he can acknowledge that Senator McCain is not the same person as Candidate McCain, I want to know who President McCain plans to be.

Would he be a robot operated by the bigwigs of the Republican party? Or would he be the McCain that we used to know and respect?

These past two weeks, with the pick of his VP, with the lies that he is sanctioning, with his avoidance of the issues, and with the sequestering of Palin from reporters and voters, it is clear to me that any hesitations I had about Obama are FAR less problematic than the erratic, dual-personality of McCain.