Carefully avoiding the word “mistake,” because the Obama White House never admits a mistake, Josh Earnest yesterday made some damaging admissions to the White House press corps.

I think it’s fair to say that we should have sent someone with a higher profile to be there.

The spin on offer yesterday was that the speed with which the gathering evolved to an assemblage of 40 world leaders caught the administration off guard.  Politico offered the rationale:

Somehow an event that the French didn’t even announce until Friday had quickly gathered momentum, drawing about three dozen foreign leaders to Paris to express their outrage at the killings of French citizens at a satire magazine and a Jewish supermarket last week. America’s representative, Ambassador Jane Hartley, looked a little out of place.

White House aides were so caught off guard by the march’s massive size and attention that they hadn’t even asked President Barack Obama if he wanted to go.

Right.  It was the staff’s fault.  The earlier excuse, that security arrangements could not be made, fell apart when the Secret Service told news sources that it was not asked or notified about a Paris trip.

Poor Josh Earnest!  He had to go out before the assembled press and defend this obvious slap in the face of the warriors against jihad.  He couldn’t say that the president and Valerie Jarrett refused to honor people who had insulted the prophet of Islam, to whom the “future does not belong,” as Obama stated before the U.N. General Assembly, going on the record in the clearest possible way.  That would be so painful that it was preferable to admit that both Obama and Biden had nothing to do on Sunday and were “sitting at home” (presumably watching the NFL Playoffs, as was admitted earlier to the U.K. Daily Mail).

Admininstration apologists are dismissing this as mere "optics."  It is a powerful symbolic statement of indifference to jihad against critics of Islam.