Dark Horses and Smoke-Filled Rooms.

The 1920 Republican convention was many things, but it wasn't dull

If this summer's made-for-TV Bush and Gore coronations give you an itchy channel-surfing finger, imagine a convention with actual suspense. That's how they used to be. Old-time conventions were more exciting than those of today, whose nominees have already been chosen in the primaries. But were they better?

When the Republicans gathered in Chicago's Coliseum on June 8, 1920, no one knew whom the party would pick to run for President. Five days and 10 ballots later, delegates had nominated an Ohio Senator and former newspaper editor named Warren G. Harding. And a new phrase had entered the political language to describe the locale of the secret, behind-the-scenes dickering by the party leaders who chose Harding: the "smoke-filled room."

As the election year began, the Republicans smelled victory. Americans were tired of worrying about the world, and they were tired of Democratic President Woodrow Wilson. World War I was over, and a Republican Congress had blocked Wilson's attempt to take the U.S. into the League of Nations, an international peacekeeping organization.

But whom would the GOP nominate to snatch the White House from Wilson's party? General Leonard Wood of New York was one possibility; he had been the commander of President Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders regiment in the Spanish-American War. Conservative Illinois Governor Frank Lowden and progressive Senator Hiram Johnson of California also had many backers.

Harding was among the less prominent candidates, known as dark horses. Party bosses liked him because he was easily manipulated. But at first he was reluctant to run. Playing poker and drinking with his friends interested him more than weighty policy matters. "I do not possess the elements of leadership or the widespread acquaintances which are essential," he had written in 1919. But Harry Daugherty, his campaign manager, assured him that presidential greatness was "largely an illusion of the people."

In February 1920, Daugherty told a New York Times reporter how his candidate might win the party's nod:

I don't expect Senator Harding to be nominated on the first, second, or third ballot, but ... about eleven minutes after 2 o'clock on Friday morning at the convention, when 15 or 20 men, somewhat weary, are sitting around a table, some one of them will say: "Who will we nominate?" At that decisive time the friends of Senator Harding can suggest him and can afford to abide by the result.

But Daugherty's prediction looked like a very long shot. The candidates met in several state primaries with no clear winner, and Harding did poorly. When the convention delegates converged on Chicago during a late-spring heat wave and cast their first ballot, Wood led a field of 13 candidates, and Harding was sixth.

On Friday night, June 12, the convention recessed after four ballots, and behind-the-scenes politicking reached fever pitch. Wood got a telephone message that one of the party's top political bosses, Senator Boies Penrose of Pennsylvania, was asking frankly for a trade of favors. As historian Wesley M. Bagby writes:

Penrose said, "You may say to General Wood, if he were nominated tomorrow, would he give us three Cabinet members?" An adviser remarked, "Now, General, one word will make you President." But Wood's answer was, "Tell Senator Penrose that I have made no promises, and am making none."

At that moment, a group of powerful Senators was meeting in Rooms 404-406 on the 13th floor of the nearby Blackstone Hotel. After four hours of smoking, drinking, and discussion, they concluded that the front-runners couldn't win. The only question was which dark-horse candidate was most acceptable. And Harding had few enemies. A consensus jelled that, as The Times wrote, "Harding fitted into the complex situation better than any of the candidates." At 2 a.m.--not 2:11--the group sent for the Ohioan and asked him if there were any personal factors that would disqualify him.

Harding asked for 10 minutes alone in a room. There, perhaps, he thought of the young mistress who had borne his child, or the married woman with whom he'd had a long affair, or simply his intellectual limitations. But when he emerged, he said there was "no obstacle."

When voting resumed on Saturday, Harding began to gain, and he was nominated on the 10th ballot. With Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge as a running mate, he went on to defeat Democrat James Cox in the biggest popular-vote landslide in U.S. history. But soon after Harding's death in 1923, the public learned that his administration had been plagued by financial scandals. An exciting convention, it turned out, had chosen a poor President.