Webloggin » Penn Out as Clinton Strategist – aka – No Outed Hypocrisy Will Go Unpunished

What happens when you run a Clinton Presidential bid and get outed for secretly doing something behind the backs of the American people? In the case of Mark Penn, pollster and Hillary Clinton campaign strategist you are sent packing after over a decade of loyalty.

Maggie Williams, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign manager, released the following statement Sunday night:

After the events of the last few days, Mark Penn has asked to give up his role as Chief Strategist of the Clinton Campaign; Mark, and Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates, Inc. will continue to provide polling and advice to the campaign.

Geoff Garin and Howard Wolfson will coordinate the campaign’s strategic message team going forward.

This is understandably what happens when the story is not Hillary Clinton at a time when she wants it to be Hillary Clinton. Penn had taken the stance of the Bush administration in helping secure a trade pact between Columbia and the United States, a move that Hillary Clinton herself opposes. The news of Penn’s lobbying efforts broke last week and Penn apologized over the weekend. But the controversy was too much of a distraction for the Clinton campaign that has suffered a number of defeats in credibility since, well, since it began.

Mr. Penn, long a divisive figure within the Clinton camp, lost his pre-eminent position after revelations that he met with Colombia’s ambassador to the United States last Monday in his role as head of Burson-Marsteller. The Colombian government hired the lobbying firm last year under a $300,000 one-year contract to help secure passage of a bilateral trade treaty with the United States.

Mrs. Clinton strongly opposes the treaty, as do many Democrats in Congress and many American trade unions, who believe the treaty is unfair to American workers. Mrs. Clinton has also cited the Colombian government’s history of suppressing the labor union movement in that country.

Of course it wasn’t helping that Hillary Clinton was continuing to suffer defeats at the hands of Illinois Junior Senator and Über lib Barack Obama. I bet hillbill wishes she could take back her decision to run in New York as opposed to home state Illinois so she could have a do over on that one.

Anyway, besides the fact that the Clinton campaign hired a lobbyist to run her strategy initiative to the White House it seems that this hypocrisy was too much to weather. It certainly flies in the face of Democrats who talk the big talk on influence right up to the day where they are caught with their hands in the cookie jar. In this case Penn took one bite too many.