Almost all American presidents play chess (part 2)

Persistence pays off for chess-playing president

Published: Thu, 2011-08-18 21:39

Carl Jacobs

Before he became the 18th US President, Ulysses S Grant played chess at his army outpost and sometimes travelled several miles in search of an opponent. When he found a player stronger than himself, he persisted in playing until he “tired out” his opponent and finally beat him. In his biography, author William Crafts wrote of Grant: “His characteristic persistence was illustrated at West Point not only by his application to studies, but by his playing the game of chess of which he was fond.”

Perhaps the strongest player ever to occupy the White House was 20th President James Garfield. He played chess with Ohio Senator and Governor Salmon Chase, the US Treasury Secretary and the Chief Justice. Arthur Hosterman’s biography of Garfield recalled that the President “enjoyed the game to the utmost” but had to deny himself even this pleasure when it repeatedly carried him into late hours of the night.

Grover Cleveland, 22nd and 24th President, also dabbled in chess and consented to become a patron for the New York Chess Congress, presenting the winner with a gold medal.

Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President, played chess during his famous hunting trips. In 1906, as a tribute to the game, he invited the masters who played in the prestigious Cambridge Springs tournament to the White House. While in office, he was rumoured to have kept an astrological chart mounted on a chess set. The record shows that several others played the game as an enjoyable recreation.

Franklin Roosevelt spent many a lunch hour playing chess with his White House guest, Henry Ford. In one of his speeches, Dwight Eisenhower said, “I am an indoor man and I find more relaxation in playing a game of chess.”

In 1962, John F Kennedy received a handsome chess set for his birthday from “a very close friend.”

Bill Clinton played for the Georgetown University’s chess team in 1968. He met with Garry Kasparov and was a keen supporter of the Chess-in-Schools programme.

Barak Obama plays chess. So does his wife Michelle. In his book, Dreams from my Father, he talks about learning the game from his grandfather and Indonesian stepfather. Perhaps the most famous non-player among US presidents was Richard Nixon. In a newspaper interview he admitted that he never understood chess. He named his dog checkers. Maybe it’s just as well.

Part 1 here: http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/2011/08/almost-all-american-presidents-play.html



Source: http://www.guardian.co.tt

Top Congressional Democrats Complain OBAMA IS NOT A LEADER!

This morning on Morning Joe the hosts were discussing the debt ceiling and the president’s handling of the issue with Peggy Noonan who wrote an article very critical of Obama in the WSJ today (among other things she called him a loser).



Scarborough interrupted Noonan to  reveal that just two days ago his co-host ultra-liberal Mika Brzezinski had heard from many Democrats about how disappointed they were in Obama. “Forty or fifty of the most powerful Democrats on the Hill” thought that “the president has been invisible,” and that “he is not a leader,” said Scarborough. They also felt he was abandoning the Congressional Democrats the same way he abandoned them during the Obamacare debate:



(if you cannot sea video below click here)









As for Noonan, she really lit into the POTUS in her column this morning saying he still has the support of the Democrats, but that support has become more tepid.

.....I want to talk about something that started to become apparent to me during the debt negotiations. It's something I've never seen in national politics.



It is that nobody loves Obama. This is amazing because every president has people who love him, who feel deep personal affection or connection, who have a stubborn, even beautiful refusal to let what they know are just criticisms affect their feelings of regard. At the height of Bill Clinton's troubles there were always people who'd say, "Look, I love the guy." They'd often be smiling—a wry smile, a shrugging smile. Nobody smiles when they talk about Mr. Obama. There were people who loved George W. Bush when he was at his most unpopular, and they meant it and would say it. But people aren't that way about Mr. Obama. He has supporters and bundlers and contributors, he has voters, he may win. But his support is grim support. And surely this has implications.

Basically even his supporters don't really trust the man.

The past few weeks I've asked Democrats who supported him how they feel about him. I got back nothing that showed personal investment. Here are the words of a hard-line progressive and wise veteran of the political wars: "I never loved Barack Obama. That said, among my crowd who did 'love' him, I can't think of anyone who still does." Why is Mr. Obama different from Messrs. Clinton and Bush? "Clinton radiated personality. As angry as folks got with him about Nafta or Monica, there was always a sense of genuine, generous caring." With Bush, "if folks were upset with him, he still had this goofy kind of personality that folks could relate to. You might think he was totally misguided but he seemed genuinely so. . . . Maybe the most important word that described Clinton and Bush but not Obama is 'genuine.'" He "doesn't exude any feeling that what he says and does is genuine."

The fact is, he's good at dismantling. He's good at critiquing. He's good at not being the last guy, the one you didn't like. But he's not good at building, creating, calling into being. He was good at summoning hope, but he's not good at directing it and turning it into something concrete that answers a broad public desire.



And so his failures in the debt ceiling fight. He wasn't serious, he was only shrewd—and shrewdness wasn't enough. He demagogued the issue—no Social Security checks—until he was called out, and then went on the hustings spouting inanities. He left conservatives scratching their heads: They could have made a better, more moving case for the liberal ideal as translated into the modern moment, than he did. He never offered a plan. In a crisis he was merely sly. And no one likes sly, no one respects it.



So he is losing a battle in which he had superior forces—the presidency, the U.S. Senate. In the process he revealed that his foes have given him too much mystique. He is not a devil, an alien, a socialist. He is a loser. And this is America, where nobody loves a loser.

 I couldn't  have said it better.  And what is becoming clearer by the day, his own party is beginning to believe him a loser.

Please email me at yidwithlid@aol.com to be put onto my mailing list.
Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com