The discussion of Mark Penn's representation of Columbia while being a top aide to Hillary Clinton inevitably gets reduced to discussions of the politics of trade, or just plain electoral politics.

But let's be clear, the government of Columbia is uniquely hated by the global labor movement. In no other country are labor leaders ROUTINELY murdered in the streets. Not fired from their jobs, not jailed, but killed by rightwing paramilitary forces that linked to rightwing forces backing the exact government paying Mark Penn's exorbinant commission. See this chart of union murders by EPI, outlining recent years of killings, in a country where more than 2,534 unionists have been assassinated over the last 21 years.

Now compare this to Venezeuela's Chavez, not my favorite representative of leftist leadership, but still a head of government who faced rightwing labor leaders who led a general strike against him and even collaborated with a coup against him. Yet Chavez did not have those labor leaders murdered or even engage in mass jailings.  Instead, he fought elections both at the polls and within the labor movement itself.  It's a messy story and some not always stellar democratic actions, but compared to a place like Columbia where labor relations have involved death squads, a shining beacon of democracy.

There is little doubt that if Clinton had a top strategist being paid tens of thousands of dollars by Hugo Chavez to represent that country's interests, mainstream media would be in complete witchhunt mode and Clinton would probably be in a death spiral.   Yet protests against Mark Penn's association with a country, where death squads are a routine part of its country's politics suppressing labor rights, are treated by many in the media as some kind of special interest protest. 

That we are even discussing rewarding the Uribe regime with enhanced trade relations, instead of debating sanctions, or at least withdrawal of U.S. aid to his regime, is a travesty.   But Mark Penn and the corrupt bipartisan culture of lobbyists supporting regimes like Uribe's to promote trade deals at the expense of workers in both countries is exactly the problem.  The sad part of the story is that the guy stepping into Penn's position as chief strategist, Howard Wolfson, remains an equity partner at the Glover Park Group (even though he is officially separated from the firm), which also is lobbying on behalf of the Columbia free trade deal. 

Clinton's best defense of her actions is that it's now hard to find major Clintonite staff who don't seem to have been put on the payroll of the Columbian regime.  But that's an even sadder comment on the lack of principles of the people that Bill Clinton brought into government-- and their unprincipled cashing in now.

Which is all the more argument for the change someone like Obama is arguing for now.   I have little doubt that in ten years, many of his top people will be betraying principles in the swamp of K Street, but at least more of them will enter government in 2009 without already having sold their souls to those who tolerate death squads as a tool of labor-management relations.