11 Celebrities Who Should Run for President

2. Ta-Nehisi Coates — 5.5 points

Writer Ta-Nehisi Coates grew up in the Baltimore described by David Simon in his newspaper work. He dropped out of Howard University, a Historically Black College, to work as a journalist before eventually landing at the Atlantic during a political discussion golden age alongside Andrew Sullivan, Jeffrey Goldberg, Megan McArdle, and more. His elegant, meticulously researched essays about race, politics, and history — most famously, 2014’s “The Case for Reparations” — culminated in 2015 that included one of the year’s best books and a MacArthur “Genius Grant.”