Using Executive resources has been the practice of each incumbent since Nixon, but, according to Alan Lichtman, a presidential scholar at American University, "What this administration has done is taken trends from the past and then projected them into the stratosphere."
An article on ABC's D.C. affilliate's website presents quite a
washing list of abuses:
Using the Treasury Department to analyze Kerry's tax proposals and deliver that info to the RNC.
Using the Department of Health and Human services to run ads promoting Bush's prescription drug plan.
Using the House Resources Committee website to drop scorn on Kerry's energy proposals.
Flying in Air Force One to repeatedly visit key swing states.
Aside: a common freeper "justification" is that "Clinton did it, too". In this case, Bush has far out-traveled Clinton in visiting swing states.
Paul Light, a professor of government at NYU, had this to say:
"Few presidents in history have exploited government as much as President Bush to get re-elected, yet few presidents have made government more the object of derision...It all acts to corrode the public's confidence in what the government says."