For a man about to sell himself as an experienced, competent candidate to fill the world's most powerful post, it is something of an embarrassment.
Even before proper US presidential campaigning has begun, the former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani's bid for the Republican campaign has been hit by a particularly painful leak.
A 140-page dossier compiled by the Giuliani camp, leaked to the New York Daily News, outlines a series of deep concerns over his chances.
Such are the potentially "insurmountable" personal and political problems Mr Giuliani faces that he may even have to drop out of the race, the document says.
Among the issues listed are Mr Giuliani's relatively liberal social views, his three marriages, his personal finances and his links to the disgraced former New York police chief Bernard Kerik.
The document also lists a series of potential backers, including Rupert Murdoch.
According to the Daily News, it was obtained "from a source sympathetic to one of Mr Giuliani's rivals for the White House" after being left behind in a city the ex-mayor visited as he campaigned for Republican candidates before November's mid-term elections.
With Mr Giuliani polled as running almost neck and neck with fellow Republican hopeful John McCain in a series of key states ahead of the first primaries next year, it's fair to say he could have done without his vulnerabilities being detailed so minutely in public.
The US response? Well, it depends on your sympathies.
The self-explanatorily aligned Right Thinker blog bemoaned the fact that the leak could derail the presidential ambitions of the man who saw New York through the aftermath of September 11:
I was a resident of NYC on 9/11 and saw the incredible way in which Rudi Giuliani led the city through that incomprehensible disaster. Very few political leaders are truly ever put to the test and Giuliani came through with an A++ on that day and the weeks afterwards ...
Rudy Giuliani may well recover from this, but if he does not, it highlights why every little detail matters in politics, particularly when you want to run for the presidency of the United States.
Readers of the Carpetbagger Report - which headlined its report "Somebody's getting fired" - reacted somewhat differently.
"Bye, bye, Rudy," gloated one, while another said: "I'm saving part of my ass to laugh off later, but this is hilarious."
The blog itself, though, took a more measured tone, noting that the leak might not necessarily spell disaster:
I suppose if you're going to have these kinds of errors, it's best to have them in early January, before they cause too many headaches.
