It must be a nerve-wracking moment in your political life when you find out your secret service code name. The secret service is protecting your life. If you discover that between themselves they're calling you 'Loser', 'Who?' or 'Future gun shot victim' that can't be good news.
Obama must be pretty satisfied with his: Renegade. It's rebellious. It's dynamic. It's kind of macho, even if it's not quite up there with Driller (Todd Palin to you or me).
Michelle is Renaissance, Malia is Radiance and Sasha is Rosebud (which you know in four years' time she is going to think is just, like, so totally lame and embarrassing. Hey, at least she's not called Twinkle, which is more than poor Jenna Bush has got going for her).
For more weirdly fascinating secret service code names (you know, the kind of really secret secret that gets published on Wikipedia), click here.
• posted by Claudia Jean
Yo! Welcome back, Claudia Jean.
These are truly super-cool code names, but aren't Renaissance and Radiance similar enough to cause confusion? Like if an agent were muttering into his curly-phone-cord-in-ear-thingy, and if there was a lot of ambient noise, "Renaissance and Rosebud en route to Dupont Circle branch of Burrito Brothers via Red Line Metro," it might sound like the sisters are going solo to get burritos instead of Mom taking baby sister while big sister stays at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to ride her unicorn around the South Lawn.
Posted by: Lyle | November 13, 2008 at 01:43 AM
You make a good point, Lyle. Though apparently (I admit that I have been doing slightly too much reading on secret service code names the last couple of days) the secret service don't really need the names anymore - they just hand them out for tradition's sake.
Myself, I am slightly disturbed by the Citizen Kane connotations of 'Rosebud'...
Posted by: Claudia Jean | November 13, 2008 at 12:41 PM