Untitled Books

Sack the advisers, says historian; Grayson Perry has an empty tool shed; and a diplomatic incident averted

✒At a debate on Obama's America, the historian Simon Schama had some advice for the US president. "He is really hopeless, disastrous, feeble at telling the American story. One example would be in the way the right wing has managed to represent bank regulation as bank bailout. Obama has been somewhat soft and soggy. American politics ought to be about the noble clash of ideas, but can also be about soggy mud wrestling. Obama seems reluctant to take up the knuckle dusters … He has failed to come up to scratch on what happens next to the great American democratic experiment. I really think he should fire his chief advisers, David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel."