$357,012 worth

The One. Air Force One, that is… flying low over New York City reenacting 911 for the pleasure of Barack Hussein Obama.

A White House aide joined the unemployment lines today for his role in Air Force One’s controversial photo-op flyover above New York, the Obama administration just announced. (Of course, it’s scheduled for a Friday afternoon.)

In a statement, the White House said President Obama accepted the resignation of military office director Louis Caldera. Caldera, a former Army secretary, took responsibility for the Air Force flyover that sparked 9/11-echo panic in lower Manhattan on April 27.

What the White House wanted was the photo above. What it got at first was the one down below at the bottom, from frightened New Yorkers’ cameras and cellphones.

The political cost can’t yet be calculated. Obama supporters won’t care. But the fact is against advice from the outgoing Bush administration, Obama’s team changed Caldera’s White House job classification from a career military officer to a political appointee. Now, we’ll see which way they go with the second appointment to the office since Jan. 20.

Here’s the other photo: