Pick Your Secret Service Code Name
It is election time. The Secret Service always has names for candidates and their significant others. Sometimes, the candidates pick the names themselves, and their family picks names starting with the same first letter.
Here are some of the more interesting names:
Bowhunter
Vice Presidential Nominee Paul Ryan cuz he likes to hunt, with a bow. His wife's code name is Buttercup.
Javelin
Presidential Nominee Mitt Romney. Javelin was once a model of car made by American Motors, where Romney's father was chief executive.
Renegade
President Barack Obama opted for this moniker after being presented with a list of names beginning with the letter "R." As custom dictates, the rest of his family's code names will be alliterative: wife Michelle is known as "Renaissance;" daughters Malia and Sasha are "Radiance" and "Rosebud," respectively.
Lancer
President John F. Kennedy. Kennedy's moniker meshed well with the "Camelot" theme of his Administration. It also works as a play on "Lancelot," King Arthur's notoriously womanizing knight. Jackie was Lace, Caroline was Lyric, John was Lark.
Searchlight
President Richard Nixon. For a chief executive undone by the late-night break-in at the Watergate Hotel, and the subsequent coverup, Nixon's Secret Service nickname — a device that reveals all — is deeply ironic. Pat was Starlight.
Deacon
President Jimmy Carter. The former Georgia governor, a devout Baptist, taught Sunday school even while occupying the Oval Office; his code-name was a fitting choice. Rosalyn was Dancer.
Sunburn
Sen. Ted Kennedy. As a presidential candidate in 1980, the Lion of the Senate (and pale, Irish-Catholic New Englander) had to suffer this code-name.
Rawhide
President Ronald Reagan. For a president who once starred in Westerns, this moniker was a perfect fit.
Smurfette
Karenna Gore, daughter of vice-president Al. Nineteen years old when her father became vice president in 1993, Karenna was told she could pick her own codename, as long as it had two syllables and started with an "s." Ever since, she wrote in 1997, "I have been cringing."
Angler
Vice-President Dick Cheney. Though Cheney's codename no doubt derived from his love of fishing, it also aptly described the vice-president's knack for pressing his agenda behind the scenes. Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman liked the name enough to use it as the title for his book on the Cheney vice presidency.
So, if you had to choose a code name for yourself and your others what would you pick?
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