It is disappointing that the filmmakers make the same choice the media does in covering government, spending most of its time on the personalities and the horse-race aspect of the elections instead of on the substance of the issues. It’s more about politicking than policies. We hear about some conflicts between the conservatives and the progressives without learning anything about the specifics of their disagreements or, more important, seeing what factors they consider most compelling and how they resolve their differences. There are calls for more money for education and less money from taxes in snippets of speeches. It would be interesting to see more of how a group of teenagers respond to those issues, one which affects them with much more immediacy than the other.
When Gavin Newson, the real governor of California, shows up he stays away from policy too, only encouraging them to be the leaders we need.
There are compelling characters and telling moments. We meet one young woman who bravely shows up as the lone delegate from her district, which has just experienced both a mass shooting and a devastating wildfire. We spend some time with the reigning youth governor, who shows impressive dignity and grace, especially when he is comforting a candidate after a serious setback. An earnest young man describes himself as “not a Republican or a Democrat, a conservative.” He shows his commitment to integrity over party (parties are randomly assigned and then the party members develop their platforms) when he discovers that some of his party’s members are sending vile white nationalist messages through an anonymous account, including anti-Semitic comments about their party’s candidate. He and another member of the party concoct a catfishing scheme to identify the people involved. They are triumphant when the perpetrators are expelled. And they get to give them what Paddington would call a hard stare when they see them exiting the program.
But most of the time is spent on the three finalists for Youth Governor, their tactics and their challenges. One is something of a young Kennedy, at least on the surface. He is an athlete and he commands the room with confidence and easy grace. He spends his final one-minute speech on stage thanking everyone and telling them “It’s not about me; it’s about you!” Another is the Elizabeth Warren of the candidates, always in command of facts and figures and her proposed solutions. She struggles to reconcile her progressive views with the more conservative members of her party. The third is the son of immigrant parents who has proudly reclaimed his ethnic first name after adopting something more “American” in middle school. He has to learn one of the most painful tasks of electoral politics—coming back from an unfortunate gaffe. The students’ proficiency with social media leads to mud-slinging meme attacks that quickly go viral.