June 3, 2012--Lancer

No, Lancer is not one of Santa's reindeers. But the Secret Service's code name for John Kennedy.

I was discussing this the other morning since a friend was curious about what his brother Bobby's was. "He didn't have one," I said, "since he was not afforded Secret Service protection."

"To say the least," she said, "too bad for him and us."

I was curious about a few other things--

Who in the Secret Service is responsible for coming up with these monikers?

Do they check with presidents, presidential candidates, first-family members, senior congressional leaders, and others deemed valuable and vulnerable enough to be thus protected to see what they think about being called, for example, Lace (Jackie Kennedy's) or does the SS have the final say?

And, more fundamentally, why do they have these code names in the first place if everyone who is interested in "breaking" the code--including potential assassins--can simply look them up on Wikipedia? As I did, and found the following--

First off I learned that the Secret Service doesn't do the selecting--the White House Communications Agency does. So that's settled, though if they do the code-naming, isn't it tempting to come up with doozies when picking those for political rivals since they get SS protection? In a moment let's see what the Obama White House came up with for Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney. If it were me in the Oval Office you know I would take full advantage of the presidential prerogative to, well, minimally be a little playful.

Then it is only common sense to make code names easy to pronounce and understand even on staticy cell phone connections and people who are not native English speakers--so Somnambulist, which would have worked for Nixon (who was one), is out. His, by the way, was Searchlight (not bad) and wife Pat's, Starlight (better).

Which brings me to another traditional thing about these names--commonly all family code names start with the same letter. John Kennedy was Lancer, Jackie's was Lace and the children were Lyric (Caroline) and Lark (John, Jr.) but mother Rose was Coppertone. Well, she did live mainly on Cape Cod in the summer and Palm Beach in the winter. But still it does feel a little nasty.

A few more--

Lyndon Johnson was Volunteer (though he was never known to do any of that), First Lady Lady Bird was Victoria (I would have gone for Valentine since that is a North American bird name and Lady Bird could have used a little love); daughter Lynda Bird was Velvet; and other daughter Luci Baines, Venus. Both, in fact, names of birds.

The George W. Bush White House named Sarah Palin Denali (whatever that is) but, more wryly, husband Todd Driller (for drill, baby, drill?).  And George W, or his Communications Agency assigned Renegade to change-you-can-believe-in candidate Obama and it stuck. Michelle is Renaissance.

They even have names for things such as the presidential Limo--Stagecoach--and two for Air Force One--Angel or Cowpuncher. Probably the former for Obama and the latter when George W was president and flew back and forth all the time to his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Mitt Romney by the way? Obama's people came up with the boring Javelin. Newt never was assigned one--he didn't stick around long enough to be code named. I wish I had been working in the Communications Agency during the week Newt was first in the polls. I'll restrain myself from telling you what I would have come up with for Newt and Callisata. Actually, I won't--poor Callista would have been Hairspray and Newt Harpo.