I honestly thought this was a joke. Nope. I'll let Commentary's Seth Mandel take it from here:
The Heritage Foundation’s Rory Cooper tweeted that Obama had casually dropped his own name into Ronald Reagan’s official biography on www.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).
A few examples:
On Feb. 22, 1924 Calvin Coolidge became the first president to make a public radio address to the American people. President Coolidge later helped create the Federal Radio Commission, which has now evolved to become the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). President Obama became the first president to hold virtual gatherings and town halls using Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc.
On August 14, 1935, President Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act. Today the Obama administration continues to protect seniors and ensure Social Security will be there for future generations.
In a June 28, 1985 speech Reagan called for a fairer tax code, one where a multi-millionaire did not have a lower tax rate than his secretary. Today, President Obama is calling for the same with the Buffett Rule.
I'm sure these former presidents are just thrilled that Obama administration officials have taken it upon themselves to self-servingly edit their public biographies for political purposes. I mean, what good is history if Obama can't repurpose it for his own glorification? Conservatives have jumped all over this on twitter, creating an #ObamaInHistory hashtag, which became the top-trending topic in the United States. Click through and browse. It's great fun.
UPDATE - On a policy note, here's a helpful primer on why Reagan would not have supported the so-called "Buffett Rule," contra the White House's biography vandalism. Obama's current plan would (a) double-down on the Alternative Minimum Tax disaster, which Congress has to fix every single year to avert middle class pain, and (b) fetch roughly $30 Billion in revenues over the next ten years. Obama's budget would add $11 Trillion to the gross national debt over the same period.
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