Obama in history?

If you haven’t gotten enough of Barack Obama lecturing on constitutional law, just wait until you get a chance to read the White House’s take on presidential history.  Rory Cooper at the Heritage Foundation was the first to notice that the Obama administration edited the official presidential histories on the White House website to include a blurb about Obama on the page dedicated to Ronald Reagan.  Commentary’s Seth Mandel followed up and found numerous other examples:

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Many of President Obama’s fervent devotees are young enough not to have much memory of the political world before the arrival of The One. Coincidentally, Obama himself feels the same way—and the White House’s official website reflects that.

The Heritage Foundation’s Rory Cooper tweeted that Obama had casually dropped his own name into Ronald Reagan’s official biography onwww.whitehouse.gov, claiming credit for taking up the mantle of Reagan’s tax reform advocacy with his “Buffett Rule” gimmick. My first thought was, he must be joking. But he wasn’t—it turns out Obama has added bullet points bragging about his own accomplishments to the biographical sketches of every single U.S. president since Calvin Coolidge (except, for some reason, Gerald Ford).

Why start at Calvin Coolidge?  I wonder whether they’ve just decided to go backwards and eventually plan to add Obama campaign slogans to every biography.  Here is a comprehensive collection of the “Did you know?” sections added to boost Obama, with links to the specific pages attached to the names of the former Presidents:

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It’s difficult to decide which of these are the lamest.  The entry on JFK has to be in the running, though, with its proud declaration that Obama signed a proclamation! That must have been hard work, eh?  The entry for Carter makes it sound like the Department of Energy is somehow separate from Obama’s administration, when it’s as integral as any Cabinet department; “works with” is nonsensical.  The Nixon entry doesn’t even try to differentiate anything Obama does from any other President in the last 40 years.

Twitchy is tracking the responses on Twitter, where #ObamainHistory is a big trending topic.  We’ll see if the effort to have historical presidential glory rub off on Obama continues at the White House with further additions to biographies.  For myself, I can’t wait to see what Obama will have to say about Millard Fillmore.

Update: Actually, my favorite response so far comes from The Corner:

In the 12th Century B.C., Moses the Lawgiver delivered the Ten Commandments to the Israelites. President Obama the Lawgiver has added significantly to them, overseeing the enactment of a record number of new regulations.

Well played, Daniel Halper.  Well played.

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