Peter Hamby reviews Double Down: Game Change 2012 by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann and focuses on Mitt Romney’s wariness of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie during the presidential campaign.
“Halperin and Heilemann make abundant use of a vice-presidential vetting file dropped into their hands by someone in Romney’s orbit to illuminate secrets about the governor. Delivering the documents to the authors was a stunning breach of political decorum that can only be read as a giant middle finger at Christie and his aides.”
“His ‘disturbing’ research file is littered with ‘garish controversies,’ the authors write: a Justice Department investigation into his free-spending ways as U.S. attorney, his habit of steering government contracts to friends and political allies, a defamation lawsuit that emerged during a 1994 run for local office, a politically problematic lobbying career that included work on behalf of a financial firm that employed Bernie Madoff. And that’s not to mention the Romney team’s anxiety about the governor’s girth.”
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