The White House has found a new way to cite President Obama's actions on issues ranging from Medicare and Social Security to energy, trade, taxes, veterans and civil rights -- by linking from the biographies of former presidents on the White House website. 
 
 Click on almost any president since Calvin Coolidge, scroll to the bottom of his official bio, and you'll find one or two references to something Obama has done to carry on that president's achievements. 
 
 The additions -- first noted in a tweet from the conservative Heritage Foundation, then picked up by the neoconservative magazine Commentaryand given broader attention by ABC's Jake Tapper -- spurred a reaction from the Republican National Committee. 
 
 On its Tumblr account, the RNC has pictured Obama in "world-changing events you didn't know Obama played a part in." Here you can see Obama landing in the New World with Christopher Columbus, attending Napolean's coronation, guest-lecturing with Albert Einstein and hanging out with Elvis and the Beatles. 
 
 White House officials point out that the official biographies are not altered in any way. The links after them take readers to other places on the White House web site via "Did you know?" tabs. 
 
 Some of the historical references are innocuous. For instance, after Coolidge's bio, the White House added this: 
 
 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. 
 
 Jump all the way to George W. Bush, and you get another reference to social media: 
 
 In 2002, President George W. Bush's State of the Union was the first to be live broadcast on the Internet. In 2011 and 2012, President Obama's State of the Union speeches were available in an enhanced live stream version that featured infographics, charts and data side-by-side in real time with the President's speech. 
 
 But in between, the references to Obama -- complete with hyperlinks that take you elsewhere on the White House website -- clearly highlight efforts the White House would like noted, such as fighting to protect Medicare and Social Security or expanding the rights of gays and veterans. ||||| THE bright blue tie worn by President Obama to his State of the Union address on Tuesday evening was an accurate barometer of the weather. This was the most Democratic State of the Union in some time, not just in the range of government initiatives he proposed — the annual speech is usually a long laundry list — but because it set a new tone. 
 
 Mr. Obama was looser than he has been in these previous annual messages to Congress — and unapologetic about his belief in government as an instrument to improve people’s lives. Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, might have been right when he snorted, in the blur of televised commentary that followed, that it was the most liberal speech by a president to Congress since Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration. 
 
 Though it was his birthday, Lincoln went unmentioned (as did Mardi Gras). The only bit of history in the speech was at the opening, when Mr. Obama took us back to President John F. Kennedy’s second State of the Union address, in 1962 — the start of an eventful year that would include the peaceful resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the integration of Ole Miss, a strong White House response to price-gouging in the steel industry and the rapid expansion of NASA. 
 
 Unapologetic governance was key to all of the above, and to a host of smaller initiatives — on the environment, public health, consumer protection and civil rights — that would later flower into Johnson’s Great Society. That was a moment — the “liberal hour,” as a 2008 book by Robert Weisbrot and G. Calvin Mackenzie styled it — when the federal government earnestly reached out to citizens in every walk of life, with no consciousness that this outreach might ever be considered unpopular. 
 
 Four months after his re-election, President Obama appears to feel increasingly the same way, and it was refreshing to hear him be himself. While there were words about compromise at the front of the speech, a gauntlet was thrown down by the president — newly empowered by his victory and an electorate that daily tilts in his direction. He was right to abandon a strategy of outreach to Republicans that was not working. Four years after he took office, the Republican party appears to finally accept that Mr. Obama is the president. So now we can get down to the real business of fighting for America’s future, one bill at a time. 
 
 A century ago, in 1913, Woodrow Wilson started the modern tradition of delivering the State of the Union address in person. (Previous presidents, except the first two, had sent written messages to Congress.) 
 
 Listening to Mr. Obama’s speech, you could hear much of the 20th century in between the lines. Certainly the New Deal was in there. Mr. Obama’s second Inaugural Address, on Jan. 21, voiced a refurbished faith in the social contract binding Americans to each other, and the State of the Union address on Tuesday put some flesh on the bones of that idealistic speech. 
 
 The middle class was trumpeted, as always, along with citizenship and mutual responsibility. But even more impressive was the president’s willingness to evoke vividly the challenges affecting the very poor, in some of his most descriptive language of the evening: “Let’s also recognize that there are communities in this country where no matter how hard you work, it’s virtually impossible to get ahead. Factory towns decimated from years of plants packing up. Inescapable pockets of poverty, urban and rural, where young adults are still fighting for their first job.” 
 
 Across much of the United States, that feels more accurate than assurances that the economy is rebounding (which Mr. Obama dutifully delivered, too). More than a few of the initiatives he unveiled — a commission to examine voting rights, an increase in the minimum wage to $9 — were directed at the most vulnerable segments of American society, and might have been lifted straight out of a speech from the “liberal hour.” (Johnson’s War on Poverty was declared in his 1964 State of the Union address.) 
 
 Ted Widmer, assistant to the president for special projects at Brown University, is the editor of â€œListening In: The Secret White House Recordings of John F. Kennedy.â€? A former speechwriter for President Bill Clinton, he was recently a consultant to the State Department. ||||| Jeez, isn't it enough you won a reelection; you had to go viral on us too, Barack? On Thursday, after defeating Mitt Romney and making white people all across this no-longer-"traditional" great nation of ours go all sad face and hilariously Twitter-rampaging, Barack Obama and his team decided to put a little icing on the victory cake. They released a video of an emotional president thanking his campaign team — and becoming visibly tearful near the end. Cue widespread epidemic of blurry monitors. 
 
 Yes, it was a prepared speech. And yes, the same morons who found it distasteful earlier this week when the president got choked up are even unhappier now that this – and I'm quoting a Chicago Tribune commenter here – "frickin' crybaby" is staying put in the White House. But plenty of others – like apparently every human being on my Twitter feed right now – saw that video as an affirmation of exactly whom we were voting for on Tuesday. It's a video of a leader with a heart. 
 
 In his speech, Obama recalled his early days as a community organizer in Chicago, how he "became a man during that process," and how he felt his work "had come full circle." And although his message was similar to the one he told the nation Tuesday night, when he said, "It doesn’t matter whether you’re black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight, you can make it here in America if you're willing to try," the tone was exponentially more subdued, more humbled and awestruck. 
 
 "I'm absolutely confident that all of you are going to do just amazing things in your lives," he said. "What Bobby Kennedy called the ripples of hope that come out when you throw a stone in a lake — that's going to be you." 
 
 What makes the clip so striking is how stunningly unique it is. In eight years, George W. Bush never had a moment of such unabashed emotion. Even Bill Clinton, for all his folksy appeal and charisma, could never quite shake off the whiff of performance in his attempts at sincere connection. And just try for a hot second to imagine President Mitt Romney making a similar speech to his campaign workers after winning the election. It's not that Bush or Clinton or Romney could never have been the guys to pull off such a dewy-eyed delivery that makes Obama's so endearing to his supporters. It's that it's an almost unprecedented display of vulnerability, one that suits both the president and the mood of the nation he leads right now.
– History is written by the winners, and in this case by the winner of the 2008 presidential election: Take a gander at almost any presidential biography on WhiteHouse.gov from Calvin Coolidge on up, and you'll find a "Did You Know?" section that somehow, some way, links their achievements to President Obama's, USA Today reports. Coolidge, for instance, was the first president to make a public radio address; but Obama was the first to hold "virtual gatherings and town halls on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc." These, er, helpful additions were first spotted by the Heritage Foundation, and conservatives are having a field day with them. "No wonder he always seems so proud of himself," quips Sean Mandel of Commentary, who was the first to blog about the insertions. The RNC, meanwhile, has set up a fairly hilarious "Obama in History" Tumblr account, photoshopping the president into everything from the moon landing to Washington's trip across the Delaware.