霍華德·舒爾茨曾擔任星巴克CEO多年，在他的任期內，他成功推出了許多新產品，比如他向美國市場成功引進了南瓜拿鐵，使“星冰樂”成了一個家喻戶曉的名字，而且成功說服我們接受了意大利語的杯型命名。

不過這回，他開始推銷自己了。日前，舒爾茨宣布將以“獨立中間人士”身份參選美國總統。這個消息立時在互聯網上掀起了軒然大波。

希拉里·克林頓的前新聞秘書布賴恩·法倫在推特上寫道：“就連新款可口可樂都比舒爾茨的參選計劃受歡迎。”《華盛頓郵報》的專欄作家亞歷山德拉·佩特里也在推特上寫道：“舒爾茨為什么不能像一個普通的億萬富翁一樣只追求去趟太空呢？”

群眾對舒爾茨參選的反應，讓不少人覺得很驚訝——其中自然也包括他本人。因為舒爾茨并非沒有選總統的資歷。除了打造了一家非常成功的企業，舒爾茨也是最早以CEO身份成為社會活動家的人之一。他因提供了較好的工人福利被備受贊譽。另外，他很早就在控槍和同性戀婚姻問題上發聲了，當時大多數企業高管甚至還沒有觸及這些問題。他甚至曾經帶領一群CEO呼吁取締政治獻金。在特朗普下達針對穆斯林國家的移民禁令后，舒爾茨還承諾要雇傭1萬名難民。

Former longtime Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has nailed countless product rollouts over the years. He is, after all, the man who introduced America to pumpkin spice lattes, made the frappuccino a household name, and persuaded us to order our drink sizes in Italian even when we’re in Des Moines.

But when Schultz announced that he was considering running for President as a “centrist independent”—essentially making himself the product he needed to sell—the launch blew up in a fiery ball of Internet fury.

“New Coke had a better rollout than Howard Schultz 2020,” tweeted Brian Fallon, a former Hillary Clinton press secretary. “Why doesn’t Howard Schultz just try to go to space like a regular billionaire,” wrote Washington Post columnist Alexandra Petri on Twitter.

Given the ex-CEO’s credentials, some—including Schultz—were surprised by the extent of the outcry. In addition to building a legitimately successful business, Schultz was one of the early leaders of the CEO activist movement. He was lauded for offering progressive worker benefits. He took on gun control and gay marriage before either was a topic most executives would even touch. He once led a group of CEOs in vowing to end political contributions until Washington got its act together. And in the wake of Trump’s travel ban from Muslim-majority countries, he pledged to hire 10,000 refugees.

不過，一名CEO作為活動家參與社會問題，與一名CEO去競選總統，還是有很大的不同的。而舒爾茨似乎混淆了兩者的區別。

對舒爾茨參選反應最激烈的是左派陣營，他們擔心舒爾茨會成為2020年大選的攪局者。直到不久之前，舒爾茨一直都屬于民主黨陣營——不過他的選舉班子拒絕評論。但他現在明確表示，由于在一些政見上左翼陣營存在分歧（比如對參議員伊利莎白·沃倫提出的“財富稅”，舒爾茨就斥之為“荒謬”），他已經脫離了民主黨。

在擔任星巴克CEO期間，舒爾茨在很多問題上采取了大膽的立場，也因此贏得了口碑。但作為一名參選人，舒爾茨對很多具體問題并無可行的政見，只顧著否決別人的提議。比如舒爾茨對CNN的波比·哈洛稱，自己對醫療問題有很深的了解，這個問題“始終在我內心深處”。但當被問到他有什么計劃時，他卻表示：“我現在還沒有計劃，我還沒有參加總統競選。”選民們都喜歡老布什總統的一句名言：“這個叫愿景的東西”。舒爾茨在當CEO的時候，是有作為一位CEO的愿景的，但他顯然缺乏作為一名總統候選人的愿景。弗吉尼亞大學政治中心主任拉里·薩巴托表示：“他的參選并不令人期待，因為他現在還拿不出什么東西。”

歸根結底，對于舒爾茨這樣的人，當下競選總統完全是個錯誤的時機。《贏家通吃：改變世界的精英把戲》的作者阿南德·吉里達拉達斯認為，就在舒爾茨試水政治的人同時，很多人“卻在質疑億萬富翁到底應不應該存在”。舒爾茨認為這種想法“很不美國”，然而這種激進仇富心理現在卻獲得了越來越多的支持。至于右翼陣營，特朗普也表示他將對美國企業界越來越苛刻。杜克大學教授亞倫·查特吉表示，隨著兩黨都在遠離中間立場，此次大選或將成為很久以來第一次美國兩黨都不愿成為企業界利益代言人的大選。

華盛頓的政治圈，從來都是和尚打傘，無法無天。從以往經驗看，大家之所以喜歡CEO出身的總統候選人，就是希望他能把商界的效率和紀律那一套挪到政界去。吉里達拉達斯認為，這是大家在拿商業的例子往政府身上“套”——我既然可以把平衡公司的盈虧，同理也就能平衡國家的財政預算。然而這一屆政府卻徹底戳破了這個泡泡。左翼智庫新美國（New America）的高級研究員李·德魯特曼表示：“如果不是特朗普當選了總統，我們現在可能還會相信這個神話。”然而事實上，公立部門和私營部門是有巨大的不同的。

民調機構Change Research的創始人及CEO邁克·格林菲爾德表示：“很多人對舒爾茨在星巴克的成就表示贊賞，但這不等于人們認為自己需要一個像他那樣的總統。”

舒爾茨以前就曾被人指責過“管得太寬”。2015年，他發起了一項“種族和諧”運動，他讓星巴克門店的咖啡師在客人的咖啡杯上寫上“種族和諧”的字樣，以鼓勵大家在咖啡店里談論這個問題。由于他的想法太脫離實際，這個運動最終無疾而終。（舒爾茨表示：“我們的執行是有缺陷的。”）喜劇演員約翰·奧利弗表示：舒爾茨之所以搞出這么個夭蛾子，大約是因為過去25年間從沒有人對他說過“不要”。消費者似乎覺得，你一個賣咖啡的，有什么資格以這么一種膚淺的方式，挑起這樣一個復雜的、令人擔憂的話題。這是舒爾茨之前沒有學到的一課——有些事情是老百姓不希望企業家涉足的。（財富中文網）

本文的另一版本刊載于2019年3月刊的《財富》雜志，題目是《舒爾茨的狂妄》。

譯者：樸成奎

But there’s a big difference between the desire for a CEO to take a run at a political issue and the desire for a CEO to run for political office. Schultz, it seems, conflated the two.

Much of the wrath has come from the left, which fears Schultz will play the spoiler in the 2020 election. Until recently, Schultz, whose camp declined to comment, had been a lifelong Democrat. But he’s now made clear that he’s moved away from the party over differences with some of the policies being floated by a flank of the left—including Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s proposed wealth tax, which Schultz called “ridiculous.”

Schultz took big, bold stands as CEO of Starbucks and was rewarded for it. But as a would-be candidate, he’s been light on specifics, focusing instead on rejecting the proposals put forth by others. Schultz told CNN’s Poppy Harlow that he knows a lot about health care, an issue he describes as “deeply in my heart.” But when asked for his plan, he said, “I don’t have a plan today. I’m not yet running for President.” Voters want what George H.W. Bush memorably called “the vision thing”—something Schultz had as a CEO but so far lacks as a possible candidate. “His candidacy is not compelling,” says Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “There’s nothing there.”

Ultimately, the issue may be that it’s simply the perfectly wrong moment for someone like Schultz to run for President. He’s dipping his toe into political waters at a time when some people are “literally questioning whether we should have billionaires,” says Anand Giridharadas, author of Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World. That’s a conceit Schultz has called “un-American,” but it’s nevertheless the type of once-radical idea that’s now gaining traction in some parts of the country. Meanwhile, on the right, President Trump has shown he is more than willing to castigate corporate America. As both parties move away from the center, Duke University professor Aaron Chatterji says this could be the first election in a very long time when neither party is vying to be the party of business.

Traditionally, the appeal of the CEO candidate was to inject the efficiency and discipline of the business world into the perceived unruliness of Washington. Giridharadas calls this the “metaphoring” of business and government—hey, I can balance the budget just like I balance my company’s books. The current administration has dismantled that narrative, argues Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at the left-leaning think tank New America. “If it hadn’t been for the Trump presidency, we would still be playing up that myth,” he says. In reality, the public and private sectors are vastly different.

“There’s an appreciation for what Schultz built at Starbucks,” says Mike Greenfield, cofounder and CEO of polling firm Change Research, “but that doesn’t translate into people saying, I need a person like this as President.”

Schultz has been accused of overreaching before. In 2015 he launched a campaign to encourage conversation about race in Starbucks stores by having baristas write Race Together on coffee cups—a disastrous move that came off as out of touch with reality. (Schultz has said, “The execution was flawed.”) Comedian John Oliver joked that the initiative showed Schultz hadn’t been told no in 25 years. Customers seemed to feel that a guy who sold coffee had no place instigating a conversation about a fraught and complex topic in such a superficial way. It was a lesson Schultz seems not to have learned: that there are some things that the public would prefer a CEO not wade into.

A version of this article appears in the March 2019 issue of Fortune with the headline “The Audacity of Schultz.”