Jim McTague‘s latest Barron’s column offers this assessment of President Obama’s use of the official White House website:

Who was the first president to politicize the White House Web page? Barack Obama! Every president on occasion has blurred the line between official business and campaigning, but Obama is measurably more aggressive than any of his predecessors. For him, blurring the line is official White House policy.

His Webmasters certainly are part of the effort. Last week, they made sure that visitors to the White House site, whitehouse.gov, were hit between the eyes with Obama’s student-loan spiel — part of the effort by the president to reconnect with the young adults who helped him smash John McCain in the 2008 election.

A bumper-sticker-sized box running across the site’s front page, declared, “Don’t Double My Rate.” Then, beneath it: “President Obama is asking you to raise your voice if you share his belief that now is not the time to double interest rates on student loans.” There was a link under that to a video of Obama’s appearance at the University of North Carolina, where he later taped a segment with comedian Jimmy Fallon.

The White House claims with a straight face that Obama’s visit to UNC and two other universities constituted “official business.” That fooled very few people. The newspaper Politico artfully described the UNC trip as “appealing to a key group he needs for his reelection campaign.” The News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C., noted, “The state is once again instrumental to the Obama campaign. North Carolina is considered a swing state and will host the Democratic National Convention in September.”

The politicizing of whitehouse.gov doesn’t stop with student loans. In recent weeks, the administration has used the official site to advance its agenda on energy, health care, and the Buffett rule. This is hardly factual information about the workings of the administrative branch, the site’s supposed topic.