Double Down: Game Change 2012. By Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. Penguin Press; 499 pages; $29.95. WH Allen; £20. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

SHARP insights buttressed by startling indiscretions fill “Double Down”, a new account of Barack Obama’s win over his 2012 Republican rival, Mitt Romney. This gripping book—a sequel to “Game Change”, a bestseller about Mr Obama’s 2008 path to the White House—cements the status of the authors as unrivalled chroniclers of campaign politics.

More than 400 sources talked, most anonymously, to Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, both journalists (Mr Heilemann once worked for The Economist). Washington is abuzz over assertions that Mr Obama’s aides considered replacing Joe Biden with Hillary Clinton as vice-president on the 2012 ticket. Panicked Republicans also tried to recruit a “white knight” alternative to Mr Romney as late as February 2012. Once the contest to pick a 2016 Republican challenger for the White House begins in earnest, expect to hear more about the book’s claims that Team Romney vetted Chris Christie, the popular and newly re-elected New Jersey governor, as a possible running-mate, only to discover “potential landmines” linked to his previous careers as a lobbyist and lawyer.

Yet outside the Washington bubble, the insight that may linger longest emerges from bafflement, not inside knowledge. It comes from Bill Clinton, who admires Mr Obama’s policies—from his big health reforms to his stimulus measures, which arguably averted an economic depression—only to express sorrow at his insularity, his alienation of business and his general distaste for the day-to-day business of politics. Mr Obama, observes Mr Clinton, “got all the hard stuff right,” but “didn’t do the easy stuff at all”.

Time and again readers are confronted with this confounding truth. The candidates drawn to the pitiless grind of American presidential politics tend to be in some way brilliant, whether they boast stellar business careers, dazzling eloquence or triumphant life-stories. But these achievements consistently co-exist with deep personal flaws.

Some blunders are explained by the ruthless nature of modern elections. “Double Down” describes how an infamous boo-boo by Mr Romney—when he cast doubt on London’s Olympic readiness in a TV interview, prompting public rebukes from Britain’s prime minister and London’s mayor—was never in fact broadcast. It was spotted on an NBC News transcript by a British-born staffer for Mr Obama, who saw the potency of the insult once flagged to the ever-chippy British press. Mr Romney’s daft decision to sing “America the Beautiful” to Florida pensioners became catastrophic in an age of instant video and lavish campaign spending. A brutal Obama spot set the Republican’s tuneless warbling against captions about his overseas bank accounts and foreign investments, and was broadcast on television no fewer than 13,000 times.

But many candidates were hindered less by gotcha politics than by problems of character. Mr Romney’s gaffes about the poor may not have been proof of viciousness, but even allies agonised over his tin ear for privilege (his aides coined the phrase: “Mitt happens”). As for Jon Huntsman, a former ambassador to China, his run for the Republican nomination was doomed because he was a “lazy, whiny wuss,” say his disenchanted staff.

The most interesting revelations involve Mr Obama. Self-made, self-conscious and almost preternaturally self-assured, the president worked hard at campaigning and fund-raising. But he recoiled from any hint of indebtedness. Lectured by the billionaire George Soros on how to talk about the economy, a fuming Mr Obama reportedly told assistants: “If we don’t get anything out of him, I’m never fucking sitting with that guy again.” Privately, he boasted that he did not know the names of his five main fund-raisers. After seeking Mr Clinton’s help, he sniped that he liked his predecessor “in doses”. There are new details about Mr Obama’s wretched first presidential debate, and his team’s efforts to shut down further displays of his disengaged, pedantic side. Deep down, the authors suggest, he distrusts the very powers to move and manipulate voters that brought him to office in the first place. “I am wired in a different way than this event requires,” moped Mr Obama while rehearsing for the second debate.

Being a top-flight politician is no easy thing, as this book shows. Everyone wants a piece of you and everybody leaks. The business of politics seems designed to inspire self-loathing. In short, presidential elections repel the well-adjusted and attract the distinctly odd. Then they strip those oddballs of what is left of their self-respect. A great but depressing read.