Howard Schultz, The Democratic Party and The Future of Liberalism

Howard Schultz on 60 Minutes (Image: CBS)

“Extremes to the right and to the left of any political dispute are always wrong.” 
-Dwight D. Eisenhower

Howard Schultz, the former CEO of Starbucks, appeared on CBS 60 minutes recently and declared that he was considering running for President of United States of America, as an independent. The rebuke from the left was swift, predictable and harsh.

The New York Times ran an opinion piece calling Mr. Schultz “irresponsible and self-centered”. Vice wrote that whilst he was not the first billionaire to run for President, he was “the most disconnected from reality.”  There were also public threats to boycott Starbucks.

The boycott threat was led by Neera Tandon, a longtime Clinton acolyte, who served as Mrs. Clinton’s policy director for her first failed presidential bid. The justice editor of a left-leaning publication, Think Progress, said that if Mr. Schultz runs, the Democratic National Committee and "major unions" and "major presidential campaigns" should "all use their email lists to promote a Starbucks boycott until he drops out."  Sadly, boycott calls have become a standard bullying tactic the left uses whenever someone does or says something they disagree with.

I was disappointed because this pushback confirmed that liberals no longer believe they have a persuasive argument or that they can win people with ideas. Instead, much like Mr. Trump they resort to bullying and browbeating anyone who dare challenge or expose this truth.

Democrats fear Mr. Schultz will split the anti-Trump vote and hand Mr. Trump a second term. This is a valid concern. However, what Democrats fail to understand is that there is a deeper malaise within liberalism that needs to be addressed, and it has nothing to do with Mr. Trump.

Liberals have long refused to acknowledge that the Trumps, Modis and Bolsanaros did not win - liberalism lost. 

Over the last fifty plus years liberalism grew complacent and ignored the growing economic inequality and social divides prevalent in every democracy. Liberals forgot that democracies, like gardens, are fragile and need constant tending. As a result, what remains today is a vapid shell of liberalism; one that stands for nothing but is against everything. It is defensive, cowardly and quick to chastise everyone, but offers no alternate vision.

Our problems are deep, messy, and have been building over generations; there are no “big ideas” or quick and easy solutions, it will take more than one generation to fix them. However, unless we start to have the prickly, honest conversations and dig into inconvenient and uncomfortable issues, we will continue to create room for extremists and false prophets, on the right and left, who will gladly fill these voids with superficial, dangerous and divisive solutions. 

I don’t want to defeat Trump; I want to address the root causes that enable people like him to win power in the first place. And the only way to do this is by offering a bold new vision for liberalism. One that is rooted in humility, civility, compassion and recognition that nobody has the answers. We will need to work together, across the political spectrum, to solve our deepest and most intractable problems.

There is already a grave danger that the continued and increasing lack of unity and disarray within the Democratic Party will likely result in Mr. Trump's winning a second term. A party that might field twenty-five to fifty plus candidates stands for nothing and will never offer a compelling vision. They will be too busy infighting and their candidates will need to resort to being outrageous or to positing extremist views, simply to stand out in a crowded field. 

The continued framing of issues with race and gender politics have also come home to roost for Democrats. We now know that Mrs. Warren identified herself As ‘American Indian’ on her Texas Bar Registration, and in Virginia the party is in full self-destruct mode. The Governor and Attorney General, both white men, admitted to wearing blackface, and the lieutenant governor, a black man, has been accused of multiple sexual assaults. The New York Times described this mess “unfolding at the intersection of race and gender, and risks pitting the party’s most pivotal constituencies against one another.”

I have sounded the alarm bells before. More than six months before the 2016 election, it became clear to me that Mrs. Clinton’s tone-deaf campaign and Democrat’s lack of cohesive message and vision was going to allow Mr. Trump an unlikely path to victory. I wrote to her campaign begging her to drop out, suggesting that if she loved this country she would let someone else run. 

Today, I am convinced Democrats are lulling themselves into the same false sense of security that Mrs. Clinton did, because they are once again unable to see past the President’s low poll numbers, historic unpopularity and the large number of investigations into his business and political activities. It is naïve and dangerous to think that any of this will translate into electoral support for Democrats from independents and anti-Trump conservatives. Especially not when they are running around championing socialism as the answer to all our problems.

The fact is that the majority of independents and anti-Trump conservatives I know find themselves without a party, and Democrats have shown zero interest in courting these voters. So I am convinced that the threat of an independent, centrist candidate is the wake-up call needed to ensure Democrats do not hand Mr. Trump his second term on a platter; like they did his first.

I admit my logic might seem counter-intuitive to some, but there is one thing I have learned about human nature; people do no act in their self-interest until there is an imminent threat. Consider that most young people do not spend money on health insurance simply because they have fewer ailments and feel healthier than older folks. By the same token most people do not buy renters insurance until they experience a pipe burst, a burglary or some other catastrophe.

I believe Mr. Schultz has integrity and would make a great President. I see in him a humility that is completely missing in our political class. If the politicians attacking him did a little research, they would find that while they have been busy making grandiose promises, Mr. Schultz was implementing solutions. Starbucks provides quality healthcare and college tuition for all of their employees and is also working to employ thousands of veterans, youth and refugees. 

Mr. Schultz’s candidacy will also compel the party to have a real debate, not superficial ones. It will force them to clearly articulate what liberalism stands for in the 21^st century. They will need to present a unified platform and message derived from assembling the most viable ideas from different factions within the party; rather than have them compete. 

Also, they will not be able to placate a subset of their base with a populist or extreme agenda, and will need to appeal to the broader electorate. The threat of Mr. Schultz splitting the vote will ensure they can no longer sidestep this debate.

Mr. Shultz will challenge them with his ideas (we are yet to hear them) - good, bad and sometimes half-baked - and will force them to stake coherent positions on messy and uncomfortable issues. I have no idea what Democrat's position on immigration is. They will be forced to offer solutions versus platitudes about equality or utopian dreams of quality healthcare, universal income and college for all. 

To take on and defeat Mr. Schultz they will need to rally around a few nationally viable candidates, deliver a unified message and will not be able to get away with simply vilifying Mr. Trump or following him into the gutter. They will be forced to address all that is broken with liberalism, our political process and craft a new vision that has appeal for ALL Americans, not just for specific groups.

Democrats are acutely aware of this and that is why they are running scared of Mr. Schultz. 

It is interesting that the people attacking him most vehemently are people from the party that lost to Mr. Trump. The media pundits claiming that there is no path to victory for an independent candidate are also the same ones who assured us that Mrs. Clinton was going to win. 

America’s founding fathers didn’t want political parties as they feared factionalism. The two-party system today is their worst nightmare. Perhaps, the time has come to break the duopoly, partisan bickering and constant gridlock that do nothing to serve the people. 

Mr. Trump lacks integrity, maturity and the temperament to lead, but to defeat the forces of Trumpism, Democrats must beat him at the ballot box with their ideas, not with more extremism or threats of impeachment. 

There is no question that there are short-term risks of an independent candidate running, but the long-term cost of not starting this debate, combined with the Democrats dangerously erroneous path, will be much more harmful for liberalism and for democracy.

 

The Dangerous Demise of Expertise

(Image: DreamMakersStore on Etsy)

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”

– Benjamin Franklin 

Way back in 2000 when Google was two years old and four years before Mr. Zuckerberg created The Facebook, during a time when unconnected and pre-smartphone humans roamed the earth, the New York Times wrote an article titled, Suddenly, Everybody's an Expert. It presciently proclaimed that “an expert, it seems, is now an ordinary person sitting at home, beaming advice over the Internet to anyone who wants help.” The article, after speaking with some real experts, went on to warn that “we are seeing a lot of questions being asked very inappropriately to the wrong kinds of people, and the wrong information is transmitted”. 

In the years that followed, the traditional and sound basis of what we once all agreed was the prerequisite for being an expert - depth of knowledge based on years of study and observation in a specific field - has completely fallen by the wayside.

It feels like an entire generation embraced the type of non-expertise the internet affords, while completely ignoring the dangers of claiming expertise without deep knowledge or specialisation in subject matters. Every second professional on LinkedIn is a self-proclaimed expert in some subject matter; the word has lost its meaning.

I have great admiration for Barack Obama, but I would never rely on him for legal advice. Nor would I let Elon Musk, arguably a genius, perform an appendectomy. Being an expert has nothing to do with intelligence, achievement or celebrity – expertise comes from knowledge that is acquired over a lifetime of study, research, observation, participation and specialisation in a subject.

We have now reached a point where we believe that success in one field translates to other fields. In part, this fallacy is based on the much-touted image of the successful entrepreneur, an image that Silicon Valley has been mythologizing for years. The myth goes like this. A tech mogul who is smart enough to accumulate massive wealth by creating a single life-changing product like a touchscreen smartphone, a search engine, a web-based retail store, an electronic payment platform or an operating system is also equipped to solve all of humankind's most pressing problems.

Granted, tycoons and inventors tend to have massive egos, but this takes arrogance to new and dangerously ignorant heights. Even the robber barons of the past, like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller (still considered the wealthiest American of all time), were not arrogant enough to believe that their wealth and power made them better positioned to solve the serious social issues of their time. They assuaged the guilt of accumulating fortunes through unscrupulous means both by donating generously to public institutions and by founding universities, libraries and hospitals that could benefit society. They merely wrote the cheques and never got personally involved in directing these philanthropic ventures, which they rightly left to the domain experts in each field.

Today, it is a different story with people like Bill Gates shaping policy for US public schools and Jeff Bezos announcing that his foundation will launch and operate Montessori- based pre-schools. No matter how well-intentioned and intelligent these men are, the fact remains that they know nothing about improving pedagogy compared to experts who have dedicated their lives to education, both inside and outside of the classroom.

According to the AP, since 2001, the Gates foundation has “contributed more than $6 billion toward reshaping American schools” and has had an outsize influence in shaping everything from classroom curriculum to teacher evaluation and student performance. The results of this well-intentioned intervention speak for themselves. During the last decade and a half, US school rankings have continued to decline among its peers; PISA results from 2015 placed the U.S. 38th out of 71 countries in math, 24th in science. Among OECD countries we ranked 30th in math and 19th in science.

At the other end of the spectrum we are muddying the waters by mistaking celebrity for expertise. Jenny McCarthy, an actress and mother of an autistic child, expounds on the dangers of vaccines and spreading scientifically debunked links between vaccination and autism. Cynthia Nixon believes she would make a competent Governor of the third largest state in the country without any people management, P&L or public policy experience. We seem to have reached a nadir of accepting wealth and celebrity as sole qualifications for expertise versus experience based on deep knowledge.

Every second actor now appends the word ‘activist’ to their credentials, yet not one of them has spent a day in prison or risked his or her life on the frontlines. I love Emma Stone and believe she is a powerhouse on screen, but why was she invited to speak at the UN? Are we suggesting that a Hollywood actress making millions of dollars is a better spokesperson for women’s rights than women like Hajiya Laila Dogonyaro and Loujain al-Hathloul who risked life and limb standing up to oppressive regimes? Or are we saying that we are so fickle that “window dressing afforded by celebrity proponents is somehow crucial for advocacy on human rights and feminist issues”? This is a dangerous trend and one that portends to mask the ugliness of serious issues while stealing the spotlight from true experts and rightful heroes.

There is no question that people in positions of authority have let us down and the world is facing a crisis of leadership. The Bush administration started a war under false premises with the US media sitting by idly. The Obama administration blatantly and repeatedly lied to the public about the extent of domestic spying by the NSA. The global financial crisis was a direct result of lax regulatory oversight across the globe. Even the Catholic Church and NGO’s have not been immune with the Red Cross’s financial impropriety in Haiti exposed and news of UN peacekeepers raping young girls in Africa over decades. From corporations to governments, there are ample examples why people all over the world have lost faith in experts and authority and are desperately searching for alternatives.

The Edelman Trust Barometer, which measures public trust in institutions, found for the first time in its 17 year history a decline in trust across all institutions - business, media, government, and NGOs. In a majority of countries surveyed, the general population no longer trusts institutions to “do what is right”. The Edelman report summed up the findings by saying that, “with the fall of trust, the majority of respondents now lack full belief that the overall system is working for them.” 

I agree with the Edelman report that in every democracy the systems and institutions meant to protect the people have failed. In every country people have consistently been let down by elected officials, corporate CEO’s and public stewards. Yet the answer is not to completely abandon these institutions, disregard experts, turn to unaccountable celebrities and trust billionaires with often-conflicting motives for the answers. Instead we need to focus efforts on rebuilding trust in these public and private institutions, create greater transparency and demand accountability from elected and unelected officials who hold positions of authority. And we need to use the law to prosecute those who have abused power, from abusive cardinals to errant CEO’s.

If we do not start to reverse this trend by respecting knowledge-based expertise once again, one day we will end up with a billionaire reality TV star in the White House; one who believes he is an expert on everything.