Boys State

BOYS STATE is an excellent documentary, not for any of the reasons you think. The film opens on the words of George Washington, from his farewell address to the Nation, 17 September 1796:

“[Political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government…”

Conspicuously omitted are the last words to that quote, “Destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

The program, founded by the American Legion, aims to turn out leaders or, more accurately, people who know how to run campaigns.

Entrants into the program are screened by a committee of mostly older, white members of the Legion.  Generic questions are given, including, “Who is your role model?”

One answers, tepidly, “Honestly, I would say Christ is my role model.”

Others discuss family, sports, Junior ROTC enlistment.  There are no questions presented to scrutinize any individual’s grasp of civics, or ethics for that matter.  It’s entirely about appearances, which can… well, you know.

In a 1998 keynote speech before a group of Florida MBA students, Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett talked about leadership qualities.  He stressed integrity as the principal quality of a good leader, “In fact, there was a guy, Pete Kiewit in Omaha, who used to say, he looked for three things in hiring people: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And he said if the person did not have the first two, the later two would kill him, because if they don’t have integrity, you want them dumb and lazy.”

After the initial introductions from the program supervisors (I say supervisors becauase there’s virtually no instruction or guidance; students are left to their own devices much like Microsoft’s Chatbot Tay), the students are assigned to represent two parties—Federalists and Nationalists.  They must pick party chairs, delegates, and outline their platform.

BOYS STATE illustrates the politics of persuasion both in method and substance.  If anything, it demonstrates that those who seek actual change for the better, like Houston native Stephen Garza, fight an uphill battle against cynics like his rival, Robert MacDougall.  But that’s only within the margins.  In the periphery, we see hints that many boys protect what fragile sense of identity they’ve cobbled together in the less than two decades of existence they’ve eked out in the political microcosms of high school.

“Some people say they’re sports junkies.  I’m a politics junkie,” says Ben Feinstein, a double amputee who idolizes Reagan—literally immortalized on his shelf as an action figure. His cup runneth over with ideological vigor and American Exceptionalism.  As an immigrant with a disability, I understand Ben just as well as I understand Steven.

Robert, a caricature of bro culture, swaggers like Kelso with hints of Spicoli.  Behind closed doors, he intimates that his assigned party doesn’t necessarily fit his actual politics.  There’s something suspiciously performative about him; we quickly dismiss it as the unmodulated affect of a preppy teenager.

Garza, the son of Mexican immigrants, and Chicagoan Rene Oterro are easily the most put-together of the bunch.  Wearing his BETO t-shirt, we see Garza walking neighborhoods in support of Laura Moser, a candidate in Texas’ 7th Congressional district.  Oterro, who helped draft a piece of actual legislation concerning convict reintegration, thoughtfully muses, “Being as inspecific as possible was a great way for me, I guess, to integrate myself.”

The two immediately remind me of the perennial opening statement of my high school civics instructor, “Man is gregarious by nature.”

Oterro quickly rises to the top as his party’s campaign chair.  Garza, who reads, strategizes, and meticulously prepares talking points emerges as a leading candidate for Governor, using his lunch hour to build alliances, “I didn’t want to run a campaign without knowing who I was representing.”

The white candidates, by contrast, shout one-dimensional aphorisms at the top of their lungs.

“Our masculinity shall not be infringed!” crows one.

“Do you want a chairman who will act for each and every one of your personal desires?” screeches another.

If on the other side of the fence the masculinity seems performative, it may well just be.  Punctuating one such exchange of macho handshakes and manly manliness, a student plays George Michael’s “Careless Whisper” off in a corner.  This can’t have been edited in by accident.  The filmmakers, Amanda McBane and Jesse Moss, do their best to run a message under the radar.  The documentary compels us, but at a cost.  The editing selectively crafts a specific narrative by concealing certain aspects of the race—be it Robert’s identity, or Rene’s favoritism of Steven.  In a sense, directors Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss play the very game they’re scrutinizing.

The central criticism: Boys State teaches the students how to run a campaign without burdening them with the responsibility, let alone a thought experiment, on how to represent and govern.  It echoes the remarks of John Yarmouth, a Republican-turned-Democrat who campaigned alongside Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in the sixties, “He never had any core principles. He just wants to be something. He doesn’t want to do anything.” (“How Mitch McConnell Became Trump’s Enabler-In-Chief”, The New Yorker. April 20, 2020.)

While it’s tempting to draw parallels to the pageant in DROP DEAD GORGEOUS—the Denise Richards talent show number comes to mind—the more apt comparison might be the recent appointees to the Supreme Court bench.  The Federalist Society—whose co-founder Steven G. Calabresi recently warned that President Trump’s unprecedented call to delay the election threatens the fabric of democracy—cultivated many of the President’s 200-some appointees.  Likewise, the American Legion seems to be grooming kids with no sense of civics, of morals, of accountability.  Ben and Robert will be successful for all the wrong reasons.

In the aftermath of the big election, one of Garza’s supporters, in tears, confides to him, “America;’s supposed to be his beam of hope for the people to come to this country with nothing and make something of themselves.”

As the closing credits roll, the white bros are buying trucks and jumping out of planes, while Garza and Oterro are hitting the pavement, making real change.