Okay, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, enough. Enough with the gimmicks and the PR stunts. No more ordering your employees to write “come together” on coffee cups, no more starting futile boycotts against political donations, no more calling on everyone to tweet #indivisible as a way to “put citizenship over partisanship.” If you care so much about the gridlock, dysfunction, and general shittiness of our federal government — and we don’t doubt that you really do — it’s time to quit with the half-measures and run for president.
This isn’t an endorsement. We’re just letting you know that it’s gotten to that point. Run as a Democrat if Hillary Clinton hangs up the pantsuits for good. Or run as an independent. You’re worth $1.5 billion — put in $500 million and let your business friends and Tom Friedman cover the rest. Running without a party will be tough but so is convincing someone to pay $8 for a cup of coffee.
Just because you’re wealthy and politically active doesn’t mean you have to run for president, dude. Well maybe it should. Because if you’re passionate about changing things, and you have the money to actually do it, hashtags and Sharpie scribbles are just kind of annoying. We’d say you could just start a super-PAC to help defeat partisan lawmakers and elect moderate cooperation-prone ones in their place — à la Mayor Bloomberg — but that seems like it would be a violation of the boycott. So running for president it is.
Great, thanks Howard Schultz. We look forward to your 2016 campaign and to briefly pretending to be interested in your Rice Krispie treats and then using your bathroom and then leaving.
