According to the poster who says he was asked to be on the team and passed, athletes were simply waiting around to see if they got the call. I would imagine that since Craig didn't get a call, he assumed that two of the guys faster than him had accepted. Then, when the list of athletes was announced, he checked and saw that someone slower than him made it.
I see your point about not using social media to complain about this (and I agree), but I'm not convinced that there is anything Craig did wrong here or could've done differently (again, outside of complaining via social media). If he had called USATF back in January, and he may have, they probably would have told him, "The process is that you sit on your butt and wait to see if we call you. If we don't call you it means that two people faster than you accepted."
I guess one could argue that he should've called in January and said that he wanted to be on the team if possible and had run his 2:14:whatever, but, to your point about respecting USATF, there are probably runners who don't necessarily want to be seen as bugging the governing body. I don't call up HR every two weeks and remind them that I should be getting a paycheck--they say that send it, and I trust them.
Why is it Craig's responsibility to pester the governing body when they claim to have a system in place?