They're in the house

WASHINGTON (AP) — Trailblazer and Tempo are making way for Renegade and Renaissance.

Yes, there even is a presidential transition for Secret Service code names, which anyway are anything but secret in loose-lips Washington.

President-elect Barack Obama — also known as Renegade — had a say in choosing the code name that his protectors use when they are whispering into those microphones in their sleeves. He was given his choice of several names starting with R.

And in keeping with the tradition of having all family members' code names start with the same letter, future first lady Michelle Obama is Renaissance, and daughters Sasha and Malia are known as Rosebud and Radiance, respectively.

As for President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, whatever else their new lives hold for them, they can take their alternate identities as Trailblazer and Tempo with them. They still are entitled to Secret Service protection.

Created in 1865 to track down counterfeiters, the Secret Service was assigned the job of protecting the president in 1913 but remained in the Treasury Department. The agency was transferred to the new Department of Homeland Security in 2003. It now protects not only the president and vice president but selected other officials and visiting dignitaries.

Lists of possible code names for those who receive Secret Service protection are drawn up by the White House Communications Agency, a branch of the military that serves the White House and Secret Service. It looks for words that are easily pronounced and easily understood in radio transmissions.

The subjects do have some say in the names they will be known by, and some have been given more leeway than others.

Which is not always a good thing.

Al Gore's oldest daughter, Karenna, was 19 when her father became vice president in 1993. Old enough to know better.

In 1997, she wrote: "Ever since four years ago, when I was put on the spot and told 'two syllables' and 'It has to start with an s,' I have been cringing in the back seat when identified as 'Smurfette.'"

Truth be told, the whole idea of secret code names is something of a misnomer these days.

"There's nothing Top Secret about them," Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren said. "It has no operational security significance encrypted communication capabilities."

Nowadays, Zahren said, the code names have "nothing to do with security" and more about tradition and ease in radio communication when tracking the subjects' movements.

They also provide never-ending fodder for comics and politicians looking for a laugh.

As vice president, Gore repeatedly told crowds that he is so boring, his code name is ... Al Gore.

Over the years, some code names have seemed fairly random — President Gerald Ford's was Passkey — while others seemed tailor-made for their subjects.

Incoming Vice President Joe Biden, who has Irish roots, is Celtic.

President Ronald Reagan, who cultivated the brush-clearing cowboy image, was Rawhide.

Jimmy Carter, a Sunday School teacher and deacon, is Deacon.

Dick Cheney, who likes to fish, is Angler. Writer Barton Gellman thought Angler was such an apt description for the wily vice president that he used it as the name of a best-selling book about Cheney.

John McCain, a four-term senator from Arizona who was Obama's Republican presidential rival, is Phoenix. His fashion conscious wife, Cindy, is Parasol.

Sarah Palin, the Alaska governor who was McCain's running mate, was Denali, just like the national park in her home state, and the natural gas pipeline project that she promotes.

Some code names have not worked out so well. When Jesse Jackson was assigned the code name Pontiac during his 1988 run for president, some thought the name had racial overtones. Pontiac is the punch line to a series of racist jokes. The Secret Service said there was no racial motivation in selecting the name, and offered the candidate a new one. Jackson said he had no problem with it.

There is no word on why Obama selected Renegade.

But it is a sure bet that he was not thinking about the word's origins. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, Renegade's earliest meanings had to do with deserting one's religion, coming from the Spanish word "renegado," originally "Christian turned Muslim."