It’s turning into Hypocrisy Watch Day here at FinkelBlog.  Earlier, we noted John Kerry complaining that “partisan politics” had crept into the confirmation process for Obama nominees–despite having engaged in hardball tactics himself to block Bush nominees.  Now it’s the president’s turn.  Speaking at the signing of an executive order to create a White House Council on Women and Girls today, Pres. Obama said

“When women are more than half of our population but just 17% of our Congress . . . we need to ask ourselves some hard questions.”

Your wish is my command, Mr. President.  How’s this for a hard question? Are you proud of having used hardball tactics to elbow a Democratic . . . woman off the ballot when you first ran for Illinois State Senate?

Here’s how CNN described it:

As a community organizer, he had helped register thousands of voters. But when it came time to run for office, he employed Chicago rules to invalidate the voting petition signatures of three of his challengers.

The move denied each of them, including incumbent Alice Palmer, a longtime Chicago activist, a place on the ballot. It cleared the way for Obama to run unopposed on the Democratic ticket in a heavily Democrat district.

As the incumbent, Alice Palmer was of course Obama’s main target.  How does he square his ruthless, if legal, tactics with today’s pious lament about the lack of women in elected office?