Obama Plane Snafu Lingers

From Camille Paglia at Salon:
I am still steamed, however, by the blunders made by the administration in its first response to the colossally stupid buzzing of New York City two weeks ago by a presidential plane and military jet. Press secretary Robert Gibbs should have been fired for the simpering, shrugging way he dismissed queries about this outrageous and terrifying event, which had occurred many hours earlier. Acting as if the issue was as insignificant as Lindsay Lohan's latest dating flap, Gibbs claimed to know nothing more than the few passing references he had seen to it on the Web.
Later on, the press was told that Obama was privately "infuriated," but no official statement from him was released, and Obama himself was never made even briefly available for comment in person -- which he could have easily done by a simple stroll in a hallway.
The Obama administration was caught with its pants down on this one. It seemed likely even then that Obama knew nothing about that obscenely wasteful photo op, and indeed a subsequent investigation led to the termination of the incompetent White House official who was responsible.
However, Obama made a serious error in failing to speak to the public directly and promptly to allay anxieties and express his own displeasure. Forget 3 a.m. phone calls: This was a high noon, tough-it-out commander-in-chief moment! The erratic deployment of a military jet over a major U.S. city was ultimately Obama's responsibility, and it was up to him to show that he knew it. Using layers of spokesmen to distance this issue made the president seem passive and uncertain about his own constitutional duties and powers.