And scared out of their wits, writes Michelle Malkin.

The really ironic thing about Air Force One strafing Manhattan is that with an once of foresight, it could have been a tremendous P.R. coup. The legacy media are hip deep in President Obama’s, err, pocket, so why not send Joe Biden or an Obama P.R. flack (but I repeat myself) onto GE’s Today Show, and some of the local New York shows, and alert New Yorkers and North Jersey residents and commuters as to what was going to happen today? Sell it as some sort of tribute to the 9/11 victims. Alert Mayor Bloomberg; he’s on Obama’s side; shares his post-capitalistic nanny state worldview, so he’d go for it as well. Instead, President Obama gets his “Mission Accomplished” botched aerial photo-op less than 100 days into his administration.

Update: The Rhetorican adds:

OK, if the White House-caused low-flying plane panic is not emblematic of the Obama administration’s weaknesses the way the Swamp Rabbit attack was emblematic of the Carter administration’s shortcomings, I don’t know what is.

For starters, it screams of a bunch of people who live in a 9/10 world.  It also speaks volumes about aloofness.  For an administration so apt at manipulating popular sentiment and emotions in all areas, it’s just incredibly insensitive towards not just New Yorkers, but all Americans who remember 9/11 with any measure of solemnity.

The most ironic part of it all is that Team O – which ran a campaign of “Hope” – just didn’t give a rat’s ass in this instance about – for several terrifying minutes – fostering a chilling sense of despair among so many.

The Wall Street Journal dubs it “A Soaring Blunder”, which sounds like the perfect title for the next satire from the Spinal Tap guys — if only real life wasn’t surrealistic enough.

Update: Related thoughts from Dianna Cotter of the Portland Examiner, who notes:

According to the New York Times, the New York City Police were informed of the event, but were also told:

“it had been barred from alerting the public. “The flight of a VC-25 aircraft and F-16 fighters this morning was authorized by the F.A.A. for the vicinity of the Statue of Liberty with directives to local authorities not to disclose information about it but to direct any inquiries to the F.A.A. Air Traffic Security Coordinator,” the Police Department said in a statement.”

However, the Mayor was not informed until he got repeated messages on his blackberry asking him if he knew what was going on. WHAT?

That last question is but one of many four letter words we’ll be uttering over the next four to eight years.