Comment by simen

Sounds like typical anti-politician bullshit. Most adults have at least a passing familiarity with the rules of chess, I don't see any reason why world leaders would be any different. Bill Clinton was on his university's chess team. Obama is said to play chess, although he never played competitively. I suppose you don't count them as Western, but the Russians, of course, take chess extremely seriously. So seriously, in fact, that the new president of FIDE, Arkady Dvorkovich, was deputy prime minister of Russia until May of this year.