Friday, May 8, 2009

Hispanic Takes Fall For 'O'

Louis Caldera, the son of Mexican immigrants who graduated from West Point and Harvard and later served as Secretary of the Army and White House Military Officer has taken the fall for the recent Obama Air Force One ground zero flyover fiasco.
In a typical Friday announcement designed to minimize media attention the White House said that the President has accepted Caldera's resignation as White House Military Officer.
Caldera was fingered for the public relations fiasco arising from the April 27 flyover, which was designed to replace a publicity photo of Air Force One flying past Mount Rushmore with a similar shot of Obama's 747 jumbo jet over the Statue of Liberty.
Many White House officials were angry at Caldera over the stunt and it became evident early on that he was to be the likely scapegoat. "This (incident) was just plain stupid," one Obama aide said as people close to the President began point fingers.
Of course, higher ups (including the President, the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense) had no intention of accepting even partial blame for the incident.
In typical Washington fashion a convenient fall guy was found.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates did apologize for the flyover in a letter Tuesday to Sen. John McCain, who posted the memo on his Senate Web site Friday but that's as far as it went.
"I am concerned that this highly public and visible mission did not include an appropriate public affairs plan nor adequate review and approval by senior Air Force and DOD [Department of Defense] officials," Gates said in the letter.
"We deeply regret the anxiety and alarm that resulted from this mission," he added.
Gates' apology signaled that the other shoe would soon drop.
It's Friday. The shoe dropped. Caldera is gone.

4 comments:

Radu Gherman said...

Why does it matter that he's hispanic?

Dan Cirucci said...

Well, as the son of immigrants his story is particularly impressive and he's had an distinguished and seemingly unblemished record up till now. He's an American success story.
So, it matters.
Also, it does seem like he was fingered all along.

Radu Gherman said...

Agreed completely. I just don't know that hispanic really captures those attributes, or if it's a subtle dig at Obama's cache of trust with that growing voter base.

Dan Cirucci said...

Well, I won't deny that I'm having some fun with this story.