Esquire makes a "Best American Political Writing" anthology

Dateline: above the sold garage, Portsmouth RI, 20 May 2005, 57 days before the move

First, stop all those emails predicting delays in my house building! Truth be told, my guy told me 6-8 months, but he is famous for delivering on time.

Cool thing about this whole deal: to buy lot and get "construction perm" loan combo, I don't really have to put up the money at the start, but rather just show equity. Both get folded into conventional loan on far side of construction. Upside being, I can earn some serious interest on the proceeds from our house here in the meantime (effectively paying 6 months of rent quite nicely), plus I can deal with my estimated taxes in the meantime without feeling like I'm robbing Pete to pay Uncle Paul. So once I get the 05 tax bill lined up, I have time through the end of the year to throw as much cash as possible at the mortgage. If I had known in advance how that worked, I would have agreed to the new build much faster.

Today was total catch-up day on car maintenance, mowing, time with kids, looking over plans for house with spouse and--tonight--my two eldest in their school musical. Read a bunch of old WSJs and caught up on today's papers, but won't get to the articles blog until late tonight, if at all.

Here's the fun thing I got in email yesterday:

Dear Mr. Barnett,

How are you? Yanilka Herrera of Esquire magazine was kind enough to give me your e-mail address. I am the editor of an annual political anthology called "The Best American Political Writing," and I'd like to include your excellent article from the February 2005 issue of Esquire, "Mr President, Here's How to Make Sense of Your Second Term, Secure Your Legacy. . . [etc]" in our 2005 edition, which will be published this October by Avalon Publishers/Thunder's Mouth Press.

I understand you retain the reprints to the article. While the anthology has been well-received, it has not become a huge seller yet -- the initial printing of this, our fourth edition, will be only 10,000 copies. As a result, my permissions budget remains on the small side, and I can really only pay nominal fees. I'm hoping a [dollar number withheld for fear of scaring off future research academics from ever joining the field] reprint fee would be acceptable to you. I can assure you that if your piece does run, you'll be in fine company. In the foreign policy area alone we have already secured articles by James Fallows, John Lewis Gaddis and Martin Peretz, among others.

I look forward to hearing back from you. (I can also e-mail you a permissions contract if needed.)

Thanks for your consideration -- and congratulations on the success of your recent book, as well.

All best,



Royce Flippin / Ed. The Best American Political Writing 2005

Hmmm. Do you think Esquire will mind the hoity-toity company?

Mark Warren really gets the credit on this one, not for the editing per se (he edited this one least of all the four I've now written for the mag; the most edited piece being the one coming out in a couple of weeks) but simply for deciding to have me write the beast.

I had told Mark about the question I got from senior Air Force officers at Air War College in Alabama the morn after the prez election and how I had just spun this answer off the top of my head (actually, not true, just the first time I said it out loud), and it was Mark who said, "You have to write that for us." My first response was, "No way, it's just too much of a reach for most people," but Warren persisted and the rest is . . . anthology.