Say what you like about the CIA, it gives good codename. The official Secret Service designation for Barack Obama is Renegade, a title that both captures the unique nature of his political achievement as the first President-elect who is the son of a Kenyan goatherd and yet also draws attention, teasingly and subversively, to the really rather composed, measured and stately way he conducts himself and his business. He's a wild card who plays by all the conventions.

There was something even more subversive and indeed inventive about the Secret Service choices of Trailblazer for George W. Bush (he was hardly claiming new ground for the Bush family in occupying the White House) and Rawhide for Ronald Reagan (the man who was mocked as a cowboy but who ensured the West won out in the end). The dry humour of the CIA was also evident, in ways I perhaps don't need to spell out, in the choice of Driller for Sarah Palin's husband, Parasol for Cindy McCain and Smurfette for Al Gore's daughter.

The outgoing Vice-President Dick Cheney was known as Angler (and not as you might have imagined Shooter) and there's now a book of the same name out, promising to reveal the dark secrets of his Machiavellian reign. Not since Lucifer served in Heaven has a number two been so powerful, or so wicked, we're led to believe. But you have to wonder how Machiavellian the whole Bush/Cheney/Secret Service operation can be when they publicise all the White House codenames like they were new additions to Gladiators or upgrades for your Xbox (now you too can pit Renegade against Trailblazer in the battle to save Wall Street from the Debt Monster).

Somehow I can't imagine Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev holding a press briefing to publicise their codenames. “Following KGB and FSB practice, we shall henceforth be known as Chuckles and Snookums. Failure to use the correct codenames in operational circumstances will be punishable by death. Have a nice day.”

But I can, however, imagine British politicians adopting codenames in the American style. Tony Blair would have been Templar (as in Simon and as in the warrior monks who got into trouble out East). Margaret Thatcher would have been Xena (no explanation necessary) and Ted Heath would have been Adriatic (massively wet, favoured by Euro elites and good for yachting). Norman Tebbit would have relished being Polecat, John Prescott is a natural Rhino and David Miliband is a perfect Cheeta (fond of bananas and captivated by Tarzan).

I'd be grateful for any thoughts readers might have on the codenames by which other contemporary politicians might be known. As for me, I think I'll take Apostrophe - while I am in my element stuck in the middle of a book, very few people understand what I'm for and the growing consensus is we'd be better off without me at all.

Accent on acting

Talking of the CIA, I went to see the new spy thriller Body of Lies last week. And found myself captivated by one mystery that was never explained by the meticulous plotting. Where did Russell Crowe's accent come from? It was one of the most mysterious I've encountered since Sean Connery's in The Untouchables.

In that, truly great, movie Connery played a lawman whose intonation veered between American, Irish and Scots before landing up exactly halfway between the last two. It was, I suppose, the first pure Rockall accent to be heard in the cinema. Or anywhere else for that matter.

Crowe's accent in Body of Lies is a Southern drawl (which I know from my own acting days is the easiest American accent to do - easier certainly than the clipped Minnesotan of Fargo or the Bostonian of JFK). But it's a quite peculiar drawl that veers from Appalachia to the Wild West by way of Bondi Beach. I still enjoyed the performance, and the movie. But I wonder if we shouldn't just ask actors to ditch the attempts at sub-regional specificity and get on with it - after all, nobody ever asked Jimmy Stewart or John Wayne to do anything else than give us themselves.

Tis the season to be careful

It's the Christmas Books Season already - just last week The New Statesman got its critics to publish their list of Great Works We Have Loved so the rest of us can all benefit from the accumulated wisdom and then ask Santa for the appropriate literary treat. I shan't make any positive recommendations at this stage - that will come later - but I can issue some warnings. Under no circumstances buy any celeb biographies (and the more loveable the person in real life, the worse the book will be), any works with puns in the titles, any anthologies, collections or miscellanies, or any books on how awful America is (cf Angler above). Not because all such books are automatically dreck. Though most are. But because those in publishing who have put making money before nurturing originality need to be told we've rumbled them and the book-buying public knows it deserves better.

Michael Gove is Conservative MP for Surrey Heath

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