The Vulture points out an interesting segment from a Weekly Standard interview with Mitt Romney, in which he refuses to talk about what parts of the government he wants to eliminate:

One of the things I found in a short campaign against Ted Kennedy was that when I said, for instance, that I wanted to eliminate the Department of Education, that was used to suggest I don’t care about education,” Romney recalled. “So I think it’s important for me to point out that I anticipate that there will be departments and agencies that will either be eliminated or combined with other agencies. So for instance, I anticipate that housing vouchers will be turned over to the states rather than be administered at the federal level, and so at this point I think of the programs to be eliminated or to be returned to the states, and we’ll see what consolidation opportunities exist as a result of those program eliminations. So will there be some that get eliminated or combined? The answer is yes, but I’m not going to give you a list right now.

I guess that's one way to avoid the Etch-A-Sketch imagery: Don't tell anyone what your positions really are, and they can't accuse you of hitting the reset button. At least Rick Perry had a list of three (or so) departments he wanted to cut. Mitt Romney won't even tell us how many departments are on his list.