A sleek black town car dropped off its passenger and sped off into the brisk, sun-drenched, bone-cold autumn afternoon. It was November 6, 2012, and Mark Halperin was headed to John Heilemann’s Williamsburg, Brooklyn, loft to coordinate and strategize the writing of their follow-up to their surprise smash hit book, “Game Change.” “Game Change” had changed the game for political reporting. The duo knew they’d need to pull another game-changer out of their collective hat yet again. They’d need a new central metaphor. And, they feared, a better election.

A day earlier, President Barack Obama had won reelection (Good, Obama thought), beating gaffe-prone former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (That’s a real shame, thought Romney), and now the “Game Change” boys would have to write a book about it. But the campaign had been predictable. Both candidates were already known quantities and each had insisted on keeping the game the way it was. Even the voters had decided to stick with the existing game.

“Well,” Heilemann asked Halperin, “what will we call the book?” Halperin was dumbfounded and blindsided. I thought we were going to call it “Game Change 2,” he said. You mean we have to come up with another phrase? The fate of the book, and the fates of both men’s careers, depended on this decision. The wrong title could sink the whole project. Bookstores might all go out of business. Literacy rates could plummet to zero. The two might literally die. Everything depended on getting the title of the book right, Halperin knew.

Suddenly, he remembered something: A sandwich, with chicken instead of bread. He had seen an ad for it on MSNBC not long ago. “John, I’ve got it. Double down. We’ll call it ‘Game Change 2: Doubling Down on Game-Changing.'”

Heilemann hated it. It doesn’t make any sense, he said. “Double down” means a specific thing, to double a blackjack bet and take another card. Figuratively it means “take a risk.” Weren’t both campaigns incredibly cautious and allergic to risk? Didn’t political reporters like us create an environment in which every single dumb thing anyone even tangentially connected to any campaign said became a four-day-long “gaffe” story, forcing everyone involved to make the entire presidential race even more of a series of rehearsed and scripted pseudo-events than it already had been?

Halperin doubled down. What game, in the end, had anyone actually changed in “Game Change”? He won out. But there’d be one final compromise: The book would be called “Double Down: Game Change 2012.” They had a name. Now, they just needed to come up with some good nicknames for all the candidates.

* * *

On a cold, sunless night on December 11, in a booth at an Upper West Side diner, the Game Changers game-planned. The book wouldn’t necessarily be harder to write. Heilemann knew that neither of them was much of a prose stylist, and all they really had to do was write down what they’d persuaded people to tell them, not explain what it meant. Heilemann knew also that they wouldn’t have much trouble getting people to talk either, because everyone knew if you didn’t talk to them, you might end up under the bus alongside the McCain strategists who weren’t Steve Schmidt. (If we don’t put quotation marks around quotes we can attribute them to people without having to be super careful about getting them right. Works for Woodward.) Heilemann knew all of that, and he knew that if it came down to it they could double down on their best trick, naming the speakers of off-the-record quotes, and playing hardball if they balked. But he also knew that unless there was going to be a surprise recount naming Sarah Palin the write-in winner of the 2012 presidential election, they didn’t have a movie.

Halperin wasn’t as worried. They had a great Republican primary to fall back on. They had Michele Bachmann. That’s a good, juicy part. Play up the crazy stuff. Everyone likes a crazy broad. Remember Liz Edwards? Boy, we did a number on her. That was great. I bet someone will say some real mean stuff about Callista this time, don’t you think?

But Heilemann knew that the general election provided thin gruel. Romney’s campaign had been feckless but not a disaster. Obama’s worst misstep was one sleepy debate performance. The result could’ve been predicted a year in advance. In fact, some people had predicted it a year in advance, with some nonsense about economic trends and approval ratings.