I have no strong feelings about my high school experience. It wasn’t the best years of my life nor was it a nightmarish four years. High school was a place to move on from. As such, until today, I hadn’t returned to my alma mater, Grosse Pointe South, since my graduation ceremony 17 years ago this June.

But Rick Santorum’s speech and the controversy that surrounded it brought me back to campus on Wednesday. Mostly because it’s nice to be someplace where khaki trousers are so socially acceptable. Also I went for, as H.L. Mencken once put it, the same reason that men go to zoos.

Thanks to manufactured outrage and bureaucratic bumbling—the speech was originally a mandatory assembly, then it was nearly canceled, finally attendance required parental permission like it was a R-rated movie—an otherwise ordinary suburban high school Wednesday became a media spectacle. How could I miss it?

In my day, South assemblies usually involved out-of-work comedians doing anti-drug shtick. They reminded those of us who didn’t do drugs that geometry class was not, in fact, the worst way adults could waste the fleeting days of our youth. For the burnouts and stoners, these programs affirmed their belief that smoking outside Farms Market and listening to Phish were, in fact, the best ways one could waste the fleeting days of his/her youth.

Substitute an ex-senator for a failed comedian and you have an equally absurd waste of time two decades later.

This would be one thing if the theme was politics, if Santorum’s remarks were part of a larger effort to engage students in the political system. Agree with him or not, Santorum might have something interesting to say about politics. However, since we confuse exposing our precious snowflake children to controversial ideas with indoctrination, the former Pennsylvania senator came (officially) to discuss “leadership.”

How to Tell Winners From Losers

We have an objective measure of politicians’ leadership talents. They’re called elections. Great political leaders — your Roosevelts and Eisenhowers and Kennedys and Reagans — win elections. They convince voters to trust them with power and persuade the electorate that their vision is best.

Rick Santorum lost his Senate seat by a 17-point margin in 2006, a historic landslide, and won just 258 of the 2,047 delegates during the 2012 Republican nomination race. Whether he’s right or wrong on issues, the last decade of Santorum’s career has been a leadership disaster

Those who can, lead. Those who can’t, write books and give speeches about leaders.

His advice was more milquetoast than revelatory: “Do what you feel you’ve been called to do.” Also, work hard. Then persevere. And something about the truth. At which point, Santorum slipped in a defense for the welfare reform law he marshaled through Congress when most of these kids were in diapers or not yet born.

“Are we better off as a society, are we truly compassionate, by caring for those who are poor and providing things for them?” Santorum asked as he explained his leadership style in contrast to that of his political opponents. “Or are we really compassionate if we say we believe in the dignity of every human life to rise and succeed and are willing to create ladders of success and tolerate failure?”

"Question Authority" -- Theoretically

It’s unclear why anyone would think members of the most marketed generation in human history would not see the “leadership” topic as a fig leaf for another agenda, but there it is.

Surely the well-nurtured adolescents of a privileged community like Grosse Pointe can make it through an honest political speech unmolested, even without the parental guidance provided by permission slips. And certainly, the Rick Santorums of the world could benefit from frank discourse with young people who will be eligible to vote in the 2016 election.

Imagine for a second if a social conservative Rick Santorum had to field questions about gay marriage from students who are demographically likely to be the GOP’s future base and, as polling tells us, likely disagree with the party’s stance on that particular hot button issue.

The one sound piece of advice Santorum offered Wednesday was that students should learn to “question authority.” However, Grosse Pointe South’s student body was denied such an opportunity during the former senator’s visit.

Even the Q&A session required written questions to be pre-screened to ensure they were germane to the “leadership” topic. Coincidentally, questions came entirely from students in the audience's first couple rows. You know, where the Tracey Flicks always sit. Eager to participate in anything that’ll look good on a college application.

Dale Carnegie Leftovers

Actual student question: “What was your greatest challenge as a high school student?”

Instead of being participants in a real discourse, these kids were little more than stagecraft as Santorum delivered a back-handed political speech, dressed up with some warmed-over Dale Carnegie, for which he was paid handsomely.

Tip O’Neil and Ronald Reagan had the same basic vision for America. I don’t think that’s the case anymore. I think there are fundamentally different visions.

America is going to be energy independent. We have enough gas in that shale rock. We have enough oil in that shale rock. We have other technologies that are coming on line that will be there for your generation and in the future. And we’re going to have a robust energy economy.

Contrary to some of his speeches, I don’t think the president is doing anything to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.

As far as I can tell, the only honorable actors in this farce are the students in South’s Young American for Freedom club. They wished to bring Santorum to campus, raised the money to do so, and organized the event. That's what student organizations are supposed to do. Hats off to them.

Had South’s administration simply decreed extracurricular clubs are free to hold events on school grounds so long as they occur outside of normal school hours, there would have been no controversy about Santorum’s appearance. He could have spoke about whatever he wanted and taken questions from anyone willing to ask them before an audience of whoever wished to attend. That might have been an instructive event. At least, it would have been one that offered no illusions about its purpose.

It’s ironic, isn’t it? Here was an event designed to teach students about leadership. Yet, virtually every possible precaution was taken to inoculate those students from opportunities to demonstrate leadership qualities of their own.

Attending the event was never a decision for students to make themselves. They were either going to be forced to attend or forced to ask mommy and daddy for permission to attend. Everyone involved was supposed to believe the lie that Santorum’s speech was sanitized of the very substance that makes Rick Santorum a public figure, thus denying students the opportunity to engage critically with ideas that influence our national agenda. And only those with thoughts pre-approved by the very "authority" Rick Santorum told them to question were allowed to speak.

As a former Blue Devil, bravo. You really did us proud today, Grosse Pointe South. Now, let’s see if I can get through another 17 years before again visiting this pedagogical swamp.