Gambling addiction expert says $10,000 bet shows Romney 'lost his cool'

Gambling addiction expert says $10,000 bet shows Romney 'lost his cool'
By Daniel Strauss

Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney's offer to bet rival Rick Perry $10,000 shows that the former Massachusetts governor lost his cool in Saturday's debate, an expert on gambling addiction said.

"The thing that really troubles me is really the timing of it all, the framing of it all, again in this very troubled economic time and he's randomly tossing it out there like it's a gentleman's bet," Timothy Fong, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute and Hospital, told The Hill on Monday.

On during the weekend's Republican presidential debate in Iowa, Romney offered Perry a $10,000 bet over whether he had called for a so-called national individual mandate in his 2010 book, No Apology. The bet sparked strong criticism from the Democratic National Committee and Romney's opponents for the Republican nomination.

Fong added, however, that making bets wasn't particularly unusual for Americans.

"To me, I see this not as seeing into the dark side of Romney," Fong continued. "To me he was getting emotional on a subject matter right there in the debate and he was being pressed like he was wrong."

"It tells me that this guy, you know, lost his cool," Fong added.

On Monday Romney defended his offer, saying it was par for the course in the argument that he and the Texas governor were having.

"This was an outrageous number to answer an outrageous charge from him and it’s been proven wrong time and time again," Romney said on Fox News.