Marketing Begins At Home

From Talking Points Memo:

The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that the strategist, Mark Penn, met Monday with Colombia’s ambassador to the United States. Clinton advisers said Penn’s meetings were not connected to the campaign, but part of his job as chief executive of the lobbying and public relations firm Burson-Marsteller Worldwide.

…

Penn has come under criticism for other Burson-Marsteller clients, including tobacco giant Philip Morris and corporate clients accused of union-busting activity. While Penn says he does not personally work on any accounts that could be construed as anti-labor, labor leaders including Teamsters president James Hoffa, have publicly expressed concern about his involvement with the campaign

And from FireDogLake:

There was always a huge conflict of interest within the campaign with Penn being both pollster and chief strategist — especially since Penn was a pollster whose results frequently seemed massaged to achieve a predetermined result. He never seemed to have any sense of limits, and his most recent decision to meet with the government of Columbia as the head of Burson-Marsteller regarding the Columbia Free Trade Agreement, even as he was working for the Clinton campaign, was unfathomable.

Can someone please explain to me how Mark Penn got to be the CEO of Burson-Marsteller? Or why he still has a job with them?

Update: Once more from Talking Points Memo:

Having your key campaign advisor also be an international man of mystery-cum-PR-lobbyist-cheeseball is fairly problematic. But for Hillary’s sake, when her political future is on the line in a state like Pennsylvania, wracked by the loss of industrial jobs for decades, you think he could have waited a few more weeks before prancing off to help get a new free trade pact passed?