Chess master, author, Russian Presidential candidate. Garry Kasparov does a little bit of everything, and after listening to him for just a few minutes, it's easy to see why. As you might guess of anyone who can beat chess supercomputer Deep Blue, Kasparov is massively intelligent in the way that his native country is just plain massive. Now, he's attempting to use his strategic mind to fix the plethora of problems facing the still-fledgling democracy in Moscow - if he's not killed first.

Kasparov has been making the rounds on late-night talk shows here in the States, and he's been quite clear about the political climate in Mother Russia. He refers to Putin's tight grip on the country as a "police state," and suggests that Bush and Cheney could enjoy the same high approval ratings that the KGB-spy-turned-President does if they had as much control of the media as the Russian government. I guess Fox News is losing its touch.

A recent spot with Bill Maher gave Kasparov a chance to wax political about everything from oil to the mindset of the Russian people - but Chris Matthews made perhaps the best point of all, when afterward he asked, "Can you imagine one of our guys talking in a foreign language at that level of sophistication?... He was sophisticated, he was intelligent, and our guys talk down to us." Or, to continue the board game theme, "Do you ever get the feeling that they're playing chess and we're playing checkers?"