Wait, I haven’t had my scandal yet!

Guest Blog by: Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Steve Preston

Hi, everybody, call me Steve, I’m the HUD Secretary for the United States and I can’t wait to get started on my scandal. Sure, almost everyone in the cabinet has had some sort of scandal but 2009 is Secretary Preston’s time to shine. And by shine, I mean 'disgrace the country.'

Hold up, you are saying the Bush Administration is over? But I haven’t had my scandal yet, it’s why I went into politics. When I was a kid, I grew up watching all the scandals of the Nixon years with Agnew and the rest getting involved in all sorts of shady deals. All of America knew who those men were and what crimes they had committed… and that’s just the point, all of America knew who these scandal artists were. That’s when I, a little boy growing up in Janesville, Wisconsin, figured out that real fame isn’t just getting power, it’s abusing it. Nothing gets your name in the papers like a scandal!

I spent my time waiting to get into a position where I could have a scandal, working as an investment banker at Lehman Brothers (if only I had stayed there, what a fame-making scandal I could have been involved in there) up to Executive Vice President of cleaning conglomerate ServiceMaster. I thought of cooking the books at ServiceMaster but I figured that wouldn’t make news past page 5 of the Chicago Tribune so I continued to hold out for that brass ring: the Bush Administration.

In 2006, I did get a job working as for Bush as the head of Small Business Association but I have to admit I was a little intimidated to make my scandal right then. With Brownie at FEMA bungling Katrina as the flavor of the month and continual superstar Rumsfield continuing to piss off the troops in Iraq, I didn’t know how to compete with those heavy hitters. I mean Margaret Spellings was using the Department of Education to wage a culture war and that wasn't even being picked up on NPR, what chance did I have to make a scandal as a rookie? But since this June, I’ve finally had my chance. HUD, baby! That’s cabinet level shit!

And what have I done with this position? Nothing. Due to the housing crisis, I was so busy fulfilling the duties of my job that I never got around to completely ignoring those duties for my own personal gain. Oh, don’t give me the excuse that I haven’t been in office long enough, Schafer in Agriculture managed to get a scandal going in less than 100 hours as Secretary of Agriculture as he defended the practice of feeding America cows that might be carrying disease. But now I’ve wasted my time in the cabinet and haven’t even been involved with as much as a travel scandal.

I should have used housing funds to help build Homeland Security Chief Chertoff's illegal border fence idea. Ugh, you always think of the best ideas after the face.

Now when history looks back at the Bush administration, they will list this entire cabinet as horrible failures, there will be remembered for generations as some of the worst people to serve in any of these positions. But what about old Stevie Preston, I’ll just be noted as doing a serviceable job with a difficult situation that I inherited. Sigh, no one remembers those who are just serviceable. Maybe I can still go get a car out of the HUD motor pool, as long as security will still let me in, and knock over a 7/11. Oh what’s the use, the media’s already onto the Obama cabinet’s corruption. Sigh, I’ll never be famous.

Wait, I’ve got it, maybe I’ll run for governor in my adopted home state of Illinois! I’m sure to do something morally corrupt in that job!