Howard Schultz had every reason to be surprised when his recent announcement that he might run for president in 2020 was met with fury by fellow liberals.
It was not that Schultz is comparatively “moderate” by the standards of the Democratic Party, or even his self-description as a “centrist,” that inspired the hostility. Joe Biden, who these days (amazingly) passes as a moderate, is currently leading in opinion polls, and Schultz’s moderation is largely confined to fiscal policies that interest few Democratic activists. On the hot-button social issues of the moment, the retired Starbucks CEO is safely orthodox-liberal. No, Schultz’ error was in telling his “60 Minutes” interlocutor that he intended to run not as a Democrat but as an independent.
In that sense, Schultz was being both shrewd and resourceful. Despite the fact that most Americans tend to vote along sharply defined partisan lines, and very closely divided lines, in recent elections, there is a tradition of looking slightly askance at the parties themselves. We’re all centrists, when asked.
While the figures are flexible, the number of people who regard themselves as “independents” (42 percent) is nearly twice the number of people who identify either as Republicans (27 percent) or Democrats (29 percent). And while in Europe political affiliation is often bound up with social class or family tradition, in America we proudly declare that we vote for the candidate not the party.
Except that, in practice, we tend not to do so. To be sure, the occasional nonpartisan candidate enjoys success, especially in local politics. Sen. Bernie Sanders, for example, runs for the Senate from Vermont as an independent. But, as a practical matter, he is indistinguishable from the Democrats whose presidential nomination he sought three years ago and may yet seek again.
Independent candidates for president, however, are another matter. Since the beginning of the 19th century, no independent or third-party candidate has been elected to the White House, and, given our two centuries-plus of electoral history, it is highly unlikely that one will ever succeed.
In most instances, independents tend to attract more attention in the press than their vote counts might warrant. For instance, in the 1948 contest between Harry Truman and Thomas Dewey, extremist voters had the luxury option of casting their ballots either for Henry Wallace on the Left or Strom Thurmond on the Right. But neither third-party candidate garnered more than 2.4 percent of the popular vote, or any electoral votes, and they scarcely affected the final outcome.
John Anderson, the much-advertised moderate/centrist alternative to Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, saw his initial support steadily diminish as the campaign progressed, and he won just 6.6 percent of the vote on Election Day.
Even George Wallace, the fiery Alabama populist/segregationist who was the first third-party candidate to win electoral votes in modern times and who went on to seek the Democratic nomination for president in two subsequent contests, only gathered 13.5 percent of the popular vote that year, which made no difference in the final standoff between Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon.
As elections have grown more closely contested, however, the role of independent candidates has been more difficult to assess. It is possible, although in my view impossible to prove, that the candidacies of Ralph Nader of the Green Party and Pat Buchanan of the Reform Party might have cost Al Gore the 2000 election in battleground Florida.
A decade earlier, the spectacle is clearer. Ross Perot, the Texas businessman and Reform Party founder who ran against President George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, successfully divided the ostensible Republican vote and delivered a winning plurality to Clinton. Yet even Perot, who holds the modern record for an independent popular vote, 19 percent, was unable to gain even a single electoral vote and finished a distant third to Clinton and Bush.
In certain circumstances, independents can make a crucial difference in the outcome of elections. What they cannot do is win the presidency, which likely accounts for the visceral reaction to Schultz.
Far be it from me to know whether Trump is vulnerable in 2020, or even determined to run for a second term. But whatever the president’s prospects or intentions, Democrats are persuaded that Trump can be defeated with ease, only up until the emergence of potential spoilers such as Schultz.
In 1992 Perot arguably cost Bush the presidency. In 1912, ex-President Theodore Roosevelt’s independent candidacy, under the banner of the Progressive, or “Bull Moose,” Party, won more votes than were cast for the incumbent president, William Howard Taft, thereby dividing the conservative electorate and electing the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson.
It has happened twice to Republicans in the past century, and it could very well happen to a Democrat. But will it?
There is a paradox at play. One of the enduring themes of elections is voters’ disaffection with politics-as-usual. Presidents are seldom unanimously admired, and Congress has been the butt of jokes from Mark Twain to Will Rogers to “Saturday Night Live.” The ever-latent hunger can be strong for a slightly unconventional, public-spirited, nonpartisan, outsider-candidate with appealing credentials to save the republic, or unify a fractured nation, or appeal to the better angels of our nature. It is not for nothing that Democrats as well as Republicans campaign for the White House against “Washington,” or “the Swamp,” or whatever else the nation’s capital represents at any given time.
This mythology, there is no other word for it, might have begun with the example of George Washington, who really did abandon his Mount Vernon retirement to answer the unanimous summons to serve as the fledgling nation’s first president. But whether or not that particular tradition began with Washington, with him it ended.
Indeed, politics has been divided along partisan lines since midway through Washington’s second term. There has been a political class, as well as a distinctly American political culture, with ideologies, family dynasties, and hoary conventions ever since.
But the notion that eligible statesmen are called, reluctantly, to serve remains a staple of political discourse nonetheless. Convention has most candidates form exploratory committees, pretending to question and agonize over their motives before announcing their official intention to run.
Accordingly, in recent decades, it is no great surprise that the thought has occurred to all manner of assorted celebrity-tycoons (Trump, Perot, Lee Iacocca, Michael Bloomberg, Mark Cuban) and retired generals (Dwight D. Eisenhower, James Gavin, Wesley Clark). Some, of course, found themselves called; others decided it wasn’t their role, at least, not at this time.
In 1940, the appearances of a Manhattan utility executive on a popular radio program led to a successful insurgency to draft Wendell Willkie, a registered Democrat, for the Republican nomination for president. In 1952, Ike was persuaded to resign as president of Columbia University and as NATO’s first military chief to return home and save the GOP from its isolationist wing and end 20 years of Democratic occupation of the White House. In 1980, Ronald Reagan had been the two-term governor of the nation’s most populous state; prior to that, however, he came directly from show business.
It remains to be seen whether Howard Schultz falls into any of these categories. To begin with, Willkie was recruited partly for his popular appeal but largely because Franklin Roosevelt’s intentions to seek an unprecedented third term were unknown, and Republicans required a wild card. Similarly, there is no comparison between Schultz the coffee magnate and the supreme commander of the allied expeditionary forces in Europe against the Nazis, or even to The Gipper’s hard-won place as the favorite son of center-right America. Even Schultz’s friend and sometime business partner Oprah Winfrey, whose own presidential prospects were discussed in serious terms after her much-applauded #MeToo speech at last year’s Golden Globe awards, must wonder if he possesses the right stuff.
To give Schultz his due, there are plausible arguments for a candidacy. He is a greater business success than Trump, and he no doubt believes that his temperament is superior to the president’s. At a time when the energy and enthusiasm of the Democratic Party is personified by old socialist warriors such as Bernie Sanders or firebrand freshmen such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., a well-groomed Seattle capitalist in a two-button suit may seem like an ideal alternative to Democrats and Republicans.
But there are two major problems. First, while President Trump’s politics have always been hard to discern, he wisely chose in 2016 to seek a major party nomination. And Twitter aside, he has governed in most instances as a conventional Republican. Voters may profess to be unhappy with Republicans and Democrats and yearn for a “centrist,” but when it comes down to it, they tend to vote in lock-step with either of the two major parties. At this moment, in particular, an “independent” has no constituency.
The second problem is human nature. The audacity that prompted Schultz to construct a business empire seems to have had the same effect on him as it has on those other successful individuals who considered a presidential run. If I could build Starbucks from scratch, surely I can do the same to make it to the White House.
But unlike science and commerce, politics is art. And, like most businesses, more political careers end in failure than not.
Philip Terzian, a former writer and editor at the Weekly Standard, is the author of Architects of Power: Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and the American Century.
