Colombia fires Penn, finds his spin ‘unacceptable’

April 5, 2008

Clinton campaign strategist Mark Penn’s lobbying work on behalf the Colombian government continues to be a headache for the controversial pollster. His meeting, relating to the pending Colombian trade deal that Hillary Clinton opposes, not only undermined the senator’s message, it contradicted his claims about clients with whom he’s directly engaged.

In some ways, his Colombian clients made things easier for Penn today: they fired him. (thanks to libra for the heads-up)

Colombia had hired Burson-Marsteller to help it win passage of a bilateral trade agreement with the United States. Mr. Penn, in his capacity as chief executive of Burson-Marsteller, met with Colombia’s ambassador to the United States on Monday to discuss prospects for the treaty. Mrs. Clinton has publicly and firmly opposed the deal because of Colombia’s history of suppressing trade unions. Many Congressional Democrats and most unions also oppose the treaty, which President Bush supports.

Several union leaders on Friday called on Mrs. Clinton to dismiss Mr. Penn for double-dealing.

Mr. Penn on Friday apologized for meeting with the Colombians, calling it an “error in judgment.” The Colombian government said his reaction showed a “lack of respect.”

Earlier today, the Colombian government issued a statement announcing its decision to “terminate the contract” with Penn’s firm, and calling his remarks yesterday indicative of “a lack of respect to Colombians,” which they find “unacceptable.”

Ezra noted yesterday, “In 2000, George W. Bush dealt with these problems by insisting Karl Rove step down from his other companies in order to work on the campaign. Clinton has done nothing of the kind, leading to all sorts of huge conflicts of interest. It’s time for Clinton to make Penn step down. Either from her campaign, or from his other jobs.”

Given the circumstances, I’m not quite sure how he manages to keep wearing any of his various professional hats.

“His meeting, relating to the pending Colombian trade deal that Hillary Clinton opposes, not only undermined the senator’s message, it contradicted his claims about clients with whom he’s directly engaged.”

That sentence should read …that Hillary Clinton SAYS she opposes…because she probably misspoke about her opposition to it, sleep deprived as she is. I am willing to bet that if Shillary is actually elected, the Colombian trade deal will be fastracked so quick it’ll make your head spin.

  • As Matt Y. over at the Atlantic sez, how do we fire Hillary? She lies on free trade, she lies on outsourcing, and her campaign has been the most disgraceful racist interlude from a Dem since the Dixiecrats all bolted to the GOP and all the while she acts like she knew MLK. “Some people lie out of interest, some because it’s their nature.”

  • She’s not even the Democratic nominee yet (as if she’ll ever be, either in this lifetime or any one of the next several), and her pet howler monkey is already instigating international incidents? Is that what we’re saying here?

    Poppycock. Penn works for a lobbying firm. That firm is hired to promote a trade package between the United States and Colombia—two sovereign entities. Hillary Clinton is not the head-of-state for either of those entities, and she’s certainly not in possession of the authority to decree what international agreements those two entities may entertain.Does she now promote the notion that she holds unilateral power to decide what may and may not be discussed in the realm of international trade?

    Is she now declaring herself to be “The Decidereress?” “The Commander Guy Gal?”

    This has the markings of “Uber-Unitary Executive” written all over it. I mean, c’mon now—you guys thought that Bu$h was bad? This “primary candidate;” this Clintonian Empress—is beginning to look like Bu$h on steroids—and she isn’t even the frontrunner in the primaries….

  • Let’s see. Obama dumps Samantha Powers because she calls someone a monster. Hillary doesn’t apologize for her Tuzla lie, and doesn’t fire Penn even when Uribe says he didn’t know if Penn was acting as lobbyist or Hillary advisor. Can we guess which one Karl Rove called “gutsy”?

  • Rove will always admire the one who won’t take responsibility for anything, it’s the Republican way. Hopefully once Hillary is out of the way Democrats can go back to being civilized people instead of grade-schoolers.

  • I wonder if Uribe might not have done his own delegate math and decided that Penn wasn’t worth the money they were paying him. Because, quite frankly, Uribe’s argument that Penn showed disrespect when he allowed that the meeting had been “bad judgment” is, kinda, lame and looks more like an excuse than the real reason. Uribe’s no fool and probably knows that politicians talk out of both sides of their mouths at once and that it was nothing more than political pragmatism on Penn’s side.

    With access to the Dem “inevitable” presidential candidate Penn was a gold mine (on the Repub side, they don’t have to worry about the future of the pact; if Bush is for it, so will McSame be). With access to someone who’s not likely to be the Dem candidate, his value is zero. So, why keep him, especially if a good excuse offers itself?

    If Hillary had any sense, she’d fire him too. And use the money she owes him to pay off the the *small* debts she owes all the way back to Iowa and New Hampshire.

  • Penn sure seems like someone who would fit in better with the Bush crowd than I’m entirely comfortable with. It would be one thing if he was doing a fantastic job and had helped Hillary coast through the primaries on her “inevitability” mantle, but as far as I can tell he’s neither competent nor ethical.

  • Vote for the Columbian Government: More accountable than Hillary Clinton.

    Penn sure seems like someone who would fit in better with the Bush crowd than I’m entirely comfortable with. -Brooks

    Why hang out with the Bush crowd when hanging out with Hills gets you time with Murdoch and Scaife?

  • shillary supports everything this guy stands for – the proof is that she keeps him around and pays him BIG DOLLARS while refusing to pay bills from the small businesses that make her dishonest campaign possible.

    I

  • The fact that Hillary hired Mark Penn in the first place, much less continues to keep him around, speaks volumes about her sincerity on the issue of trade and a host of related issues.

  • Ha, ha. Columbia pays its bills. Clinton doesn’t pay hers. She owes Penn big bucks.

  • Interesting that Clinton got compared, negatively, with G. W. Bush and Karl Rove. Or maybe Ezra was just saying that Clinton/Penn are a third rate version of Bush/Rove.

    I figure libra to be spot on: i.e. the Colombians put a wet finger to the wind and decided to cut Penn loose. Will Clinton figure it out?

  • Poor Mark. If Hillary paid her bills, he wouldn’t have to moonlight.

    And of course the real problem here is all us Democrats who’ve been giving money to Obama instead of to Clinton, which we should be doing because she’s the candidate with inevitability she deserves it it’s her turn, and because she has won the popular vote most of the primaries many of the delegates the vote of ALL of the people who’ve voted for her. Therefore this is all our fault.

  • There’s so much spin in and about HRCs campaign that nothing is believable anymore — nothing. By what criteria would you chose what to believe if you wanted to? It’s the same thing we’ve had from Bush for the past seven years, where they go on saying and doing stuff and we waste our time trying to figure it out according to rules of normal behavior. These people don’t work that way. The rules don’t apply to them.

    And so, mistakes were made, someone mispoke, someone else apologizes for what you heard, someone else misremembered and jokes about it on TV, and somebody else and Penn continues to make “errors in judgement.” Same old sh*t.

  • N.Wells, well put – shillary did sleep with bill clinton, so that makes here highly qualified – just like jeff gannon should be the candidate on the republican side.

    America was founded as an dynasty based on entitlement – it is suppose to be bush-clinton-bush clinton.

  • I’m not quite sure how he manages to keep wearing any of his various professional hats.

    You answer your own question, Steve. You assume that Mark Penn is any way “professional”. But if we assume that he’s not, wearing many hats is not really a problem, is it?

  • Former Dan said: The hat that bothers me the most is that Blackwater hat of Penn’s.

    Time to revist that.
    http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1007/6219.html
    John Edwards circa 10/5/07:

    “Bush has been a perfect example of cronyism, because Blackwater has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republicans and to President Bush. I also saw this morning that Sen. Clinton’s primary adviser, Mark Penn, who is like her Karl Rove — his firm is representing Blackwater.”

    Juiciest quote:

    Labor leaders objected to his firm’s work against union organizing, and Burson-Marsteller’s work for clients that include the tobacco industry and a leading, troubled subprime mortgage lender, Countrywide Financial, have also drawn fire.

    Dolorous, demented, and despicable.
    A tangled bush-clinton web of deceit…
    If the Hillary Ds fall any further… we will have to give them Fs and call them Freaks.

  • NYTimes is a veritable *fountain* of “iffy” Clinton stories today… Take this one, for example:
    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/05/us/politics/05woman.html?ref=politics

    It really is becoming a joke of a campaign; an Old McDonald kind of campaign:
    …with a mis-speak here,
    and a little lie there,
    no-checks (of sources) anywhere,
    full confusion everywhere…

    Everyone’s tiptoeing around the Penn story and giving him (and Clinton) the benefit of doubt (vide Ezra quote above, and it as the same in other places as well: poor Penn, finds it too difficult to wear two conflicting hats at once). Very proper, and in line with the “innocent until proven guilty” principle rule of our laws (until the advent of Bush/Cheney).

    But what, if he *wasn’t* wearing two hats at all? What if he was the *intended* conduit of the reassuring message that “all’s well and all will be well, once I’m back at 1600 PA Ave. What you’re hearing now is but so much hot air, necessary to propel the campaign. Pay no attention to it”.

    That, after all, is what Obama had been accused of, just before Ohio, vis NAFTA: spouting militantly populist messages in public and sending reassuring ones via back corridors… In so far as I’m willing to believe that *all* politicians lie as easily as they breathe, why is that possibility — that Clinton lied — not mentioned? She has a much longer history of those little, “fibulous”, encounters with truth than he does.

    And the “Pregnant Ohio woman died for lack of insurance” (article quoted above), while not as bad as the Penn story, still stinks on almost every front. Let’s forget, for a minute, that she never checked it for accuracy — she liked it, it grabbed her attention, it fitted in with the stump narrative… Not surprising that she latched onto it. It’s her *credulity* that strains my imagination.

    If Clinton is *so* committed to improving our pitiful healthcare and the lot of the uninsured…

    *How come* she didn’t even know that it is *illegal* for hospitals to refuse emergency care to pregnant women — irrespective of their insurance status? Hasn’t she ever visited an emergency room? Hasn’t she ever seen those — big — signs (in several languages) which say that? Hasn’t she ever listened to the Repubs bitchin’ about the problems with illegal immigrants? One of which problems is that they overload the Emergency Rooms (as well as the school systems)?

    If a hospital cannot refuse care to an illegal immigrant, it’s gonna refuse care to a citizen? Hello? Didn’t they teach logic at Wellesley? At the law school later on? Or did Madam think that logic wasn’t something one applied to everyday life?

    And to think that, barely 4 months ago, I’d have blithely voted for her, and happy to do so… Those extra-long primaries, as tiresome as they are, have been a revelation to me.

  • Penn needs to go.

    So do the anti-Clinton rants. I guess you guys have been in bed together so long you don’t know how insanely Rovian you sound.

  • clinton gets what she deservers – toss your hat in the ring and this dialog is fair – its part of the process. If shillary (and the people she surrounds herself with) can’t stand up to public scrutiny, then we should be talking about it.

    It ain’t a rant if it is all verifiable and true.

    bill had his chance – took the party to the right – shillary’s only real credential is that she was married to bill. She is a liar and has consistently shown she will undermine the party rather than work towards changing the direction this country is going it.

    the clintons are the toxic ones – under no circumstances do we need another president that believes the office is their personal entitlement.

    No bush-clinton-bush-clinton – Enough is enough!

  • Nell, @22, says:

    “Penn needs to go.”

    He should have never been hired. And, if a mistake had been made in hiring him, he should have been cut loose *long ago*. Because… since you bring up the image of being “in bed together”… He’s passed on all of his fleas onto her already, and letting him go now won’t do her a blind bit of good.

    As for us being Rovian… Surely, you jest… Rove gave a public seal of approval to feisty Hillary *and* her “political bedmates” (like Penn); he has absolutely no use for Obambi *or* his (liberal wacko) followers…

  • #25

    Please save your comments and others of like mind. Reread them in 12 months.
    We’ll reopen the conversation then.

    ps
    Your opinion of HRC has been formed by the likes of Rove. You don’t know it yet, but you will.

  • My opinion of the Columbian government just improved. My opinion of Hillary has not. It will if she jettisons Penn.

    “Colombia fires Penn, finds his spin ‘unacceptable’”

    Speaking of collegiate-sounding headlines, I can’t wait to see “Berkeley fires Yoo, finds his spin ‘unacceptable.'”

  • 26. Nell said: Your opinion of HRC has been formed by the likes of Rove. You don’t know it yet, but you will.

    I don’t know about everyone else, but my opinion of HRC has been formed by Penn, Wolfson, Ickes, Lanny Davis, Carville, Geraldine Ferraro and dozens of other small-fry who actually spoke for the campaign. To suggest that Rove somehow controls the messages that come from her paid advisers is ludicrous. She hired all these slimeballs, and they reflect poorly on her judgment. In contrast, name one slimeball Obama is paying?

    As for Penn, he seems to be the go-to lobbyist for companies who do things that liberals find disgusting. Would he even be a Democrat if not for there being less competition for jobs from the dregs of the corporate world on the left side of the fence?

  • All of the Clinton supporters also conveniently refuse to comment on the fact that Hillary and Bill have actively courted Rush Limbaugh’s listeners, Richard Mellon Scaife’s readers and Rupert Murdoch himself. If our opinion of HRC really “has been formed by the likes of Rove” then it is probably because she has him on the payroll secretly too.

  • The Colombia thing, it would seem, has been going on for some time now—as have other international conversations on trade. Penn’s lobbying company has been dealing in issues like this for a while, and his lobbying company wasn’t exactly created yesterday.

    Comeback Bill knows this.

    Nell knows this.

    Hillary Clinton knows this.

    The only reason that Hillary is taking heat on this is that a “wee thing called THE TRUTH” is finally beginning to slip out. It is a “say-this/do-that” Truth that gives us—and the entire world—yet another reason to compare the “apples” of Clintonianism with the “oranges” of Bu$hylvanianism, and realize that what, in fact, we are really examining in this comparison is nothing more than two putrid bags of rotten fruit.

  • Either Hillary knew about Penn’s lobbying efforts on Columbia’s behalf in which case she’s a two faced liar or she didn’t in which case she is blind & stupid, which I doubt. Either way combined with her inability to tell the truth, the whole truth & nothing but the truth, she is sounding more like Bush on a daily basis and 7 years of lies are enough.

  • FWIW, I think the biggest problem by far with Hillary’s campaign was that she trusted Penn as primary strategist. If she had ditched him after Iowa I think she would have won the nomination. How many times has he shot them in the foot since then, 20 or more? It’s baffling why anyone trusts this clown, he must be a great lobbyist one on one.

  • She won’t fire him.

    Bush didn’t fire Rummy.

    Fealty to the leader is more important than ethics and competence for both GWB and HRC.

  • He’s out as chief strategist, he still works for the campaign.

    Does his firm still represent Blackwater USA?

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