Double Down to Dullsville

I suppose we should be pleased that every couple of months, a book , that old-fashioned communication form in which ideas are related at considerable length, is able to captivate official Washington for a moment or two. A while back it was Mark Leibovich's This Town , which cast a jaundiced eye on the incestuous world of press and politics in the capital, and the latest is Mark Halperin and John Heilemann's Double Down: Game Change 2012 , which won't be officially released until tomorrow but already stands at #8 on Amazon. I haven't read Double Down , but if it's anything like the authors' previous work, there'll be no jaundice to be found. As in Game Change , their best-selling account of the 2008 election, the authors show themselves to be aficionados of the scoop for scoop's sake, giving us the inside skinny from campaign operatives with scores to settle but avoiding saying anything interesting about what it all means. That's perfectly fine—if you're interested in politics, reading...