This AP story from a few days ago seems like just another drop in the bucket. So the Bush administration is looking to restaff with the aid of 2004 transition funds, even though they would already be in office (obviously) if reelected. Well, we already knew they were corrupt.
But the more I think about it, the more this attempted impropriety suggests promising memes that we should be touting. The scandal, after all, isn't just that the treasury would be raided unnecessarily if Bush wins. It's that the administration is admitting that it needs to utterly retool!
I get stuck, however, when I try to boil this down to a single meme. It would be something like: Bush team admits need for total makeover"; but ideally I'd like a meme that takes this plan to restaff and ties it in to administration's disavowal of any responsibility for what's happened in the country over the past few years.
I share the blogosphere's general sense that this "not our fault" campaign on behalf of our "strong leadership in times of change" is going to prove a miserable failure. But for it to fail utterly, we will need to seize every opportunity to make it clear that these haven't been simply "times of change," but moreover times of profound misleadership. The transition money grab seems to provide an opportunity to make that clear. Agree?