At the height of his 2012 election campaign, U.S. President Barack Obama told his campaign staff “We all know that Bibi Netanyahu is a pain in the ass,” according the new and much discussed political book “Double Down, Game Change 2012” that came out Tuesday in New York.

Recounting a September 30 afternoon campaign meeting at the White House, the book's authors John Heilemann of New York Magazine and Mark Halperin of Time Magazine write: “He talked of Israel and Palestine. We all know that Bibi Netanyahu is a pain in the ass, Obama said. But the president blamed himself for accepting the distorted political prism through which every effort to achieve a settlement in the region was mediated.”

Interestingly, the quote describes Obama’s new “hands-off” approach to Middle East peacemaking at the time, after his unsuccessful attempts to move the process forward during his first three years in office. Secretary of State John Kerry efforts may have forced Obama to reverse himself once again.

The authors, however, don’t dwell on this statement and thus neglect to mention that Obama made his remark when tensions with Prime Minister Netanyahu were at their peak. Netanyahu had just publicly collided with the U.S. administration over his demand that the Obama set red lines for Iran, and was suspected by the White House of openly supporting Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s bid to unseat the president.

The new book “Double Down” is a sort of sequel to the original “Game Change” that Heilemann and Halperin wrote about the 2008 election campaign. The book served as the basis for an HBO film about John McCain’s decision to pick Sarah Palin, played by actress Julianne Moore, as his running mate.

Netanyahu is mentioned in only one other place in the book, in connection with a White House confrontation with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, which the authors refrain from detailing. The authors tell of Obama’s appreciation for Biden’s personal loyalty, and recount his harsh response to criticism of the president voiced by Congressman Anthony Wiener, he of the sexting scandals, at a Democratic forum on tax reform.

“The VP upbraided [Wiener] so forcefully and so profanely that he earned a standing ovation. A few months later, Biden did something similar in the White House to Netanyahu. The stories always got back to Obama, who relished them.”