Even better, his name is already being floated for president. The first major mention came, weirdly enough, in the New York Times column in which Maureen Dowd broke the news that Joe Biden was still considering a presidential run. “Potent friends of America’s lord of latte, Howard Schultz, have been pressing him to join the Democratic primary, thinking the time is right for someone who’s not a political lifer. For the passionate 62-year-old—watching the circus from Seattle—it may be a tempting proposition,” she wrote, but the morsel was somewhat overlooked beside the Biden tidings.

Schultz himself writes in Thursday’s Times that he’s not running. “Despite the encouragement of others, I have no intention of entering the presidential fray. I’m not done serving at Starbucks,” Schultz writes.

But Schultz’s denial is hardly Shermanesque, concluding with a somewhat cryptic anecdote about a rabbi and worthiness. His description of the sort of leader he believes America needs sounds a lot like, well, Howard Schultz. He calls for “servant leadership,” including “putting others first and leading from the heart.” He says leaders need to appeal to civility and humility. Those are just the sorts of initiatives Schultz has trumpeted. Remember Starbucks’s “Come Together” campaign during the the 2013 government shutdown? Or “Race Together,” the well-intentioned but ill-fated post-Ferguson push for a race conversation? As The Seattle Times notes, political engagement has been a surprising hallmark of his second stint as Starbucks CEO, and the Puget Sound Business Journal says it’s heard this kind of rumor before.

Of course, it’s unfair to compare Schultz to Trump for any number of reasons. Schultz is inherently a more serious person, and he’s been more politically consistent over the years. He also probably couldn’t pull off what Trump is doing on the campaign trail right now—who could?

But a Schultz campaign, or even the fantasy of such a thing, mirrors the Trump phenomenon in the GOP. As Republican leaders seek to modernize the party, they’re pushing the party to accept comprehensive immigration reform, reach out to minority voters, and seek accommodation on social issues like gay marriage, which they believe the party needs to put behind it. But many Republican voters still care a lot about these issues and don’t take kindly to having them nudged toward the dustbin. Trump has succeeded by capitalizing on this grievance and on voters’ dislike of GOP mandarins—something he’s uniquely suited to do as an outsider.

The Democratic Party is in flux, too, as the centrist legacy of Bill Clinton seems to give way to a party enthralled by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. The result is a party that is more confrontational, and more concerned about economic justice and social justice, and more willing to pick fights with corporate America. It’s easy to see why that direction wouldn’t appeal to someone like Schultz, an executive who sees himself bringing people together.