President Obama’s top advisers staged an intervention two days before the second debate with Republican contender Mitt Romney for fear he was derailing the campaign, the authors of a new political tell-all claim.
In “Double Down,” Mark Halperin, and John Heilemann say that Obama was continuing down the same disastrous path he forged during his first presidential debate with Romney in 2012, in which he appeared lethargic and long-winded — sending his team into panic mode.
“All the things that had been problematic for (Obama) in Denver, his disdain for Romney, his contempt for Romney — he couldn’t figure out how to deal with that,” Heilemann told Savannah Guthrie on TODAY Monday. “He would say, ‘What am I supposed to do when he starts spewing his BS?’”
Add to that his contempt for the theatrical nature of politics, and Obama was tanking in preparation for the second debate.
Read an excerpt of ‘Double Down’: How Obama beat the birthers in 2012
“He gave this horrible practice session performance that left (his team) totally stymied about how they were going to fix it before this debate that they thought was, at that point, the crucial thing for reelection,” Heilemann explained.
In what Halperin calls the most “dramatic moment” and toughest scoops they uncovered in their reporting on the Obama administration, the president’s team staged an intervention.
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