Here at DadLabs, we know how important it is to be informed when you cast your vote in the 2008 presidential election. In this episode of The Lounge, we rate republican presidential candidate John McCain from the "dad" perspective. Daddy Clay is joined by guest host Daddy Gregg and together, the dads take a look at how McCain stacks up on family issues like education, healthcare, and family leave. An earlier episode features a discussion on McCain's opponent, Barack Obama. DadLabs ep. 378.

Daddy Clay: Hey welcome back to the lounge – I’m Daddy Clay.

Daddy Gregg: And I’m Daddy Gregg.

Daddy Clay: Welcome to our special guest-host as we continue our series in this political season, in assessing the presidential candidates through the lens of fatherhood, as dads. Who is the best candidate for a dad?

Today Daddy Gregg is going to lead us through a conversation about John McCain.

Daddy Gregg: And I’m very excited to be able to present to you some of the more important information about my candidate John McCain. Whose a wonderful man - and incase you didn’t know – he’s a war hero.

Daddy Clay: Really? I learned something today already.

Daddy Gregg: So it’s my understanding that McCain is not for what Obama is for, and I think that’s pretty much how he’s trying to sell himself.

Daddy Clay: Shocking!

Daddy Gregg: There are a couple of things that might be important, obviously education is always an important topic, and John McCain is a school choice kind of guy. You may have heard about vouchers that the government will subsidize – the idea is that he believes in a market economy, and he believes that that will work in education.

That if we give people a choice – parents get money to move their kids to schools, maybe private schools or charter schools. That the competition will increase the quality and that parents will be happier because they have more options that just the crappy little public school that’s in their neighborhood.

Daddy Clay: Philosophically, I think having choice is a good thing – school vouchers is interesting to me but you know free market and education? Whoa!

Daddy Gregg: Certainly there are other things that he wants to do in the realm of education – one of the things that I thought was tremendous is, a lot of lower-income students don’t have access to the same things that the kids with money – like SAT prep courses and that kind of stuff. And so he’s willing to dedicate $250 million to what he calls ‘digital scholarships’.

He might say that he doesn’t know how to work a computer but he understands the value of them. And so families will be able to receive up to $4,000 per child to do SAT prep classes, to do remedial courses online, to get tutoring – and I think it sounds like a wonderful idea.

Daddy Clay: In principle it sounds good, I mean - dude doesn’t know how to use a computer, dude doesn’t know how to use electricity – I mean dude is old!
Daddy Gregg: Old is good – change is bad.

Daddy Clay: It’s hard to be opposed to - you know, some scholarship dollars floating around out there.

Daddy Gregg: And obviously the other big issue we have to touch upon is healthcare, and while we will not go as far as to say ‘universal’ healthcare – why would we be wanting to cover everybody? There are people out there that don’t want healthcare, or can afford it themselves. And we can’t require people to have healthcare – that would be almost like living in communist China.

So one of the things he really wants to focus on is, our healthcare system right now – is kind of the emphasis is on your employer, you know – you get your healthcare through your job or else you get screwed, and so he wants to take the emphasis away from that. And make it easier for families and individuals to get healthcare from various places – again more choice, $2500 – I think $5,000 for families.

Daddy Clay: But it’s a tax break right?

Daddy Gregg: Yeah it’s a tax break – a deduction, so that you can go anywhere - not just in your state, you can go nationwide, and the emphasis less on the employer, so that you can get this healthcare and you can take it from all the different jobs that you get fired from – because that’s really the biggest problem.

Daddy Clay: It’s a tax break! You get a tax break – a specific tax break to pay for…

Daddy Gregg: We call it a tax credit.

Daddy Clay: A tax credit! What if you’re not making a lot of money and don’t pay a lot of taxes? If it costs $13,000 – what if you’re not paying that much in tax? What if you’re poor? And you don’t pay very much in taxes – what good does a tax credit do you if you’re not paying any taxes?

Daddy Gregg: Well the way the republicans see it is – that’s not really an issue because everybody wants to make more money, everybody thinks eventually they will make more money, so everybody will vote for the system that works for when they are making more money. The American Dream – brought to you by the Republican Party.

Daddy Clay: I just don’t see if you’re somebody that’s struggling to pay for health insurance, how giving you a tax credit is really going to help you then get health insurance, but whatever.

Daddy Gregg: Now obviously though, the last thing that we need to talk about – because we talked about it with Obama, is the personal side of the story. And as you all know, John McCain has a wonderful 21st century adoption, divorce, re-marriage things – put together is ‘the real America’.

Daddy Clay: I think that just speaks for itself. So I guess that’s all for us here this week in the lab. Thanks a lot for joining us.

Daddy Gregg: My pleasure

Daddy Clay: Those are the issues - let us know, go to dadlabs.com – join the community, participate in the conversation – we are going to start a couple of discussion threads there, about which candidates you guys like the best – join in the conversation there, and we’ll see you next week here in the lounge.

Daddy Gregg: Don’t forget to vote.