smoke-filled room

1. A room filled with smoke, especially tobacco smoke.
2. A place, especially a hotel room near a political or business convention, where a group of influential people gather to negotiate or make deals in private.

During the 1920 Republican National Convention a small group of party leaders gathered in a private hotel room to select the Republican presidential nominee. After hours of bargaining and cigar smoking, the group agreed upon Warren Harding as a compromise candidate. A reporter described the selection as being done in a smoke-filled room. Popular distaste with a nomination process that featured too much influence from party leaders and professional politicos sparked reforms leading to the electoral primary system. Nevertheless, the phrase lingers in America's political jargon and metaphorically describes a decision-making process whereby power brokers make deals while hidden from public scrutiny.

Bibliography

Downes, Randolph C. The Rise of Warren Gamaliel Harding, 1865–1920. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1970.

Pomper, Gerald. Nominating the President: The Politics of Convention Choice. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1963.

A popular expression used to describe a place where the political wheeling and dealing of machine bosses (see machine politics) is conducted. The image originated during the Republican presidential nominating convention of 1920, in which Warren G. Harding emerged as a dark horse candidate.

In U.S. political slang, a smoke-filled room is a secret political gathering or decision-making process. The phrase is generally used to suggest a cabal of powerful or well-connected men meeting privately to nominate a dark horse candidate or make some other decision without regard for the will of the public. The origin of the term is an Associated Press report describing the process by which Warren G. Harding was nominated as Republican candidate for the 1920 Presidential Election. After many indecisive votes, Harding, an unlikely and little-known candidate, was chosen by Republican senators and party power-brokers in a private meeting at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago.^[1][2]

Notes

1. ^ Wolfe, Gerard R., Chicago In and Around the Loop: Walking Tours of Architecture and History, 1996, McGraw-Hill, p.176.
2. ^ Smoke-Filled Room

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