White House didn't initiate; routine USAF request
For what it's worth, don't blame Obama's White House for initiating this. It was conceived and planned within the DoD bureaucracy, a routine public affairs photo shoot as the USAF saw it.
It is true that it got signed off on by Caldera but at his level it was the Air Force saying, "And next week, we change the air fresheners in the VC-25s on Sunday, then on Monday morning we use one of them for a photo shoot over the Statue of Liberty. That OK?" Caldera -- among others -- should have caught it but this was not something ordered by a publicity hungry White House.