Morning Must Reads — Census jobs mask hiring dip

The new employment numbers are disappointing.

Private hiring fell off from 218,000 jobs in April to 41,000 jobs in May.

Meanwhile, government employment increased by a total of 390,000 thanks to the addition of 411,000 temporary Census workers whose work will be done next month.

Economists were hoping for a minimum of 100,000 new real jobs, but the private sector, likely due to anxiety about a return to recession, slowed hiring dramatically.

Remember – adding 125,000 jobs a month only allows the U.S. job market to tread water. To reduce the unemployment rate, you need something more like 250,000 real jobs a month.

It’s not fair to factor out the Census entirely, because many of the workers passed up on other opportunities to take the short, easy stints working for Uncle Sam.

But total job growth was 431,000, meaning that sans Census, the number would be 20,000. That’s very unhappy news.

Writers Lucia De Leo and Jeff Bater explain:

“The report Friday showed that the private sector created 41,000 jobs in May, after adding 218,000 jobs in April. Employment in professional and business services rose by 22,000. Manufacturing continued to trend up, rising by 29,000. The industry, which has been leading the economy’s recovery, has added 126,000 jobs over the past five months. Construction, a sector of the economy that remains soft, lost 35,000 jobs in May.”

Washington Post — White House is feeling weight of controversies surrounding oil spill, elections

The administration’s defensive crouch is not proving to be an appealing posture.

Obama has for the second time canceled a long-planned Asian tour, and the reasons tell us a lot about what’s changed in two months.

Obama opted to postpone the trip in March at the last minute, to the great cost and consternation of the press corps that planned to travel with him to his boyhood home in Indonesia and other exotic locales. Obama chose to make everyone wait because he did not want to be distracted from his health care push.

With this trip, however, Obama has been forced by the oil spill to indefinitely postpone the trip, scheduled for the week after next, well in advance because the administration is afraid of how it will look to have the president and first lady being sumptuously entertained in the Spice Islands or departing plush portals of The Dharmawangsa while the Gulf of Mexico was choked with oil.

The president Thursday also scheduled a trip to India in November, and could make his Indonesian homecoming and Australian drop-by part of that trip. But whenever he goes, it won’t be at a time of his choosing.

BP is claiming some success in capping the cut well with a “top hat,” again prompting the question of why America had to wait for more than a month before two obvious-seeming remedies – jamming the thing full of mud and cutting away the wreckage to get a clearer shot at the pipe — were tried. Was BP trying to save the well? Was the administration unable to approve a plan? Both?

Writer Dan Balz does a good job at looking how Obama, after carrying his history making momentum through the start of his term has suddenly found his presidency becalmed by bad luck and his administration’s mistakes.

Balz sounds a similar note to the one his colleague David Broder trumpeted earlier this week when he asked “Is President Obama’s Carter moment nearing?”

Broder said not yet, but look out.

Balz posits that the Gulf spill combined with the ham fisted efforts to bribe two candidates (who happen to be liberal reformists) out of primary elections has left the Obama team looking not like trend setters but butt coverers.

It adds up to Obama not being seen as a leader, even within his own party.

“Another Democratic strategist, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer an analysis of White House operations, said Obama’s top advisers appear most focused on protecting his standing and his reelection prospects. ‘At the end of the day, they tend to ‘half do’ on problems they believe aren’t directly about the president and/or 2012,’ the strategist said. ‘In short, they are ambivalent about dealing with these things and it gets them into trouble.’”

USA Today — Obama under fire for election tactics with Sestak, Romanoff

The Washington Post went looking through the Nixon archives for any paper trail on Tricky Dick using federal job offers to bribe candidates out of primaries in 1972 and, of course, found some.

Patronage is as old as politics. Jobs are awarded for favors done. Of the 5,000 direct political appointments every president makes, each one is considered for its political impact. Which Senator’s son needs a U.S. Attorney job? Which donor deserves the ambassadorship to the Court of St. James?

But it’s telling that the memo from Nixon aide Fred Malek on trying to entice three Republican gubernatorial candidates out of running in 1972 came emblazoned with a warning from its author to check with then-Attorney General John Mitchell about making such offers.

Obama may have been Nixonian in wanting to manipulate the outcome of elections to his own benefit, but not so Nixonian as to have cautious and discrete staffers.

As Examiner colleague Byron York points out, the vague White House answer on the Sestak affair, that the congressman was offered a post on an unnamed presidential advisory board, looks implausible because the Incompatibility Clause of the Constitution forbids any member of Congress from holding a post in the executive branch. So what was the deal? And why are the White House and Sestak being so shady about it?

As the very explicit job dangling to Andrew Romanoff shows, the administration certainly wasn’t shy about offering plum positions. So why the implausible story about using Bill Clinton as a cutout to offer Sestak a job any White House lawyer knew he was ineligible for?

Writer Mimi Hall works hard to downplay the controversy, but the fact that the Sestak and Romanoff story are now getting this kind of play in the most widely consumed general interest newspaper in the country suggests that the storyline of Obama’s maladroit Machiavellis will be with us for a while.

It hurts the president’s reputation generally but also his team’s clout among insiders. It all looks so bush league.

“Ethics lawyers and good-government groups agreed that the White House efforts amount to politics as usual in Washington — as routinely practiced by both political parties.

Richard Painter, who served as the ethics officer in George W. Bush’s White House, said Obama’s aides did nothing wrong when they made their unsuccessful entreaties to the Democratic Senate challengers.

‘Nothing they’re doing is illegal or improper’ under current law, he said.”

London Telegraph — Gaza flotilla: Israel accused of ‘sabotaging’ Irish aid ship Rachel Corrie

It seems the Israelis may have taken Max Boot’s advice and knocked out the electronics on the next protest ship bound for the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. Or maybe it’s just a hunk of junk with bad electronics.

The vessel, named after the American 23-year-old who got killed trying to stop the Israelis from bulldozing smuggling tunnels running into Gaza in 2003, is bound for Gaza in an effort to shame Israel into lifting its blockade.

Israel, increasingly isolated internationally, seems determined to enforce the blockade designed to keep weapons out of Gaza.

But the Indonesian/Irish-backed effort is coming on, navigation and radios or not.

“Audrey Bomse of the Free Gaza Movement said: ‘The situation is we lost all contact with the boat.

‘We assume this was sabotage by the Israelis.’

She went on: ‘As a result of these threats, we’re going to pull Rachel Corrie into a port, add more high-profile people on board, and insist that journalists from around the world also come with us.

‘We’re hoping communications get turned back on so we can inform them of the decision.’

It is thought organisers are considering sending another boat alongside the Rachel Corrie if communications are not restored.”

Wall Street Journal — Bud, Make It Perfect

Imagine if the Wall Street Journal editorial writers looked at politics and law the way they look at baseball.

The paper’s editorial today calls for retroactive justice on behalf of pitcher Armando Galarraga who was robbed of the honor of pitching the 21st perfect game in baseball history by a blown call at first base.

The rules of baseball provide no grounds for appeal and give the umpires on the field absolute authority over enforcing the rules. Asking Commissioner Bud Selig to reverse the call and change the rules, the Journal is calling for justice in baseball, where only the rule of law has ever been offered.

Journal columnist Peggy Noonan gets it.

She talks about the grace and dignity with which Galarraga accepted the injustice and the self-effacing decency of the umpire, Jim Joyce, who admitted his error and apologized to Galarraga in unambiguous terms.

Both showed class. Both showed sportsmanship. Both provided a great example of how to deal with disappointment and mistakes.

The both acted like grownups.

The Journal editorial writers who decline to identify Joyce “out of mercy” don’t get it. Joyce made a mistake, but was a man about it. In these days when arrogant crybabies dominate sports, Joyce and Galarraga both stand out.

First Base Umpire Don Denkinger stole the 1985 World Series from the St. Louis Cardinals by blowing an “out” call in equally egregious fashion. It broke my 9-year-old heart and I hated Denkinger for it. But so what? Baseball, like life, isn’t fair.

The Journal editorial board should quit acting like such a bunch of liberals when it comes to baseball.

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