Why Chess Makes Kasparov Qualified to Lead Russia

I am of course familiar with the stereotype of the chess player as madman. And in King’s Gambit I portray individual chess games as passionate, operatic encounters.

Thus I am always amused by the reverse stereotype: chess playing presented as sterile, as an activity as tedious as waiting for paint to dry. Last night a correspondent on “Anderson Cooper 360″ briefly discussed Garry Kasparov’s candidacy for the presidency of Russia and said (and I apologize if I may have gotten an inconsequential word or two wrong; I was wearing my dozing-off cap, not my journalist hat): “He might make a very good president because he has a lot of experience sitting around with old guys where nothing much happens.”