[nehalita]

Personally, I feel that even though this was the Secretary of Commerce's job, this wasn't the place to say things like this. "Great" is a relative term and even Einstein said, "Relativity applies to physics, not ethics" (see signature for emphasis).
It doesn't matter who thinks what, unless you want to hear all sides of the story from all parties, making an assertion like this should not be done...especially not here.

Of course, this is over now and we can do nothing about it (or can we?).

$0.02.