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At a media availability in Indianapolis, Barack Obama declined to comment on how Senator Clinton decided to deal with her former chief strategist Mark Penn — who’s been demoted to a lesser advisory position after it was revealed that he’d worked to pass a Colombian free trade agreement that she opposes.

“I think it was surprising to me that a high ranking, if not the highest ranking, member of Senator Clinton’s team would be engaged in business activities and lobbying that was directly contrary to the position Senator Clinton had taken,” he said.

But if one of his advisors had done the same thing?

“Let me put it this way: I’m not surprised that Senator Clinton found herself in an uncomfortable position as a consequence. And I know that if staff of mine were putting me in that kind of position, I would get rid of them.”

Clinton spokesman Jay Carson wonders why, if Obama would get rid of a staff member who contradicted his candidate in a meeting with a foreign government, he’s retained his chief economic advisor Austan Goolsbee.

“When Sen Obama’s top economic advisor told the Canadian government not to take his anti-NAFTA rhetoric seriously, he and his staff misleadingly denied that the meeting ever occurred, and then took absolutely no action,” Carson said in a statement. “It’s good to know he has a higher standard for our campaign than his own.”

An Obama aide calls the Penn-Goolsbee comparison “apples and oranges,” pointing out that Goolsbee was never on staff and that both the campaign and the Canadian government denied the original account by a low level government official — which had Goolsbee claiming that Obama’s anti-NAFTA rhetoric on the stump was “more reflective of political maneuvering than policy.”

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With many of the political reporters in Washington chasing the Mark Penn story, Hillary Clinton herself is staying out of the spotlight.

She’s in Washington with no public events — a down day that was scheduled long before Penn’s resignation — and she avoided reporters’ questions as she was boarding the press plane in Albuquerque last night, even pulling a Reaganesque cupping of her hand behind her ear to emphasize that she couldn’t hear us shouting Penn’s name.

The one campaign event so far today: a conference call on Senator Clinton’s new $300 million plan to battle breast cancer — though even that call descended briefly into Penn-land when a reporter asked policy advisers who they thought would fill his role on the campaign.

Domestic policy director Katherine Brown shot him down post haste. “This is a policy call, and we’d be happy to talk to you about those questions if you’d go ahead and contact our press office,” she said. “But we really need to stick to the subject matter.”

As Major Garrett says, “when in doubt, push policy.”

A day after the Wall Street Journal reported that senior Clinton strategist Mark Penn had met with the Colombian government to discuss how to pass a free trade deal with the US that Senator Clinton herself opposes, the Columbian Embassy says the country has terminated it’s contract with Penn’s firm Burson Marsteller because of Penn’s “lack of respect.”

The campaign aide’s PR company inked a $300 million deal with the Colombians to help shepherd the free trade agreement through the legislative process. But after Penn’s meeting became public, Clinton was reportedly livid.

Sources within Hillary Clinton’s campaign told Major Garrett that staff “outrage” was at a boiling point over the Monday meeting. Clinton herself was unaware of the sit-down until it was revealed in the press, and expressed her displeasure directly to her top strategist. Other Clinton officials were furious that Penn, already unpopular within the campaign, would divert attention from Clinton’s campaign to curry favor with the Colombian government on behalf of a free trade deal.

Penn was forced to apologize privately and publicly, releasing a statement saying “the meeting was an error in judgment that will not be repeated and I am sorry for it. The senator’s well known opposition to this trade deal is clear and was not discussed.”

Today, the Colombian government released a statement saying it was ending its arrangement with Burson Marsteller precisely because of that apology — saying it demonstrated “a lack of respect to Columbians.” Specifically, the government said that calling a meeting with it’s ambassador an error in judgment was “unacceptable.”