While the Republican National Convention of 1920 occurred in June of that year, I wanted to discuss it now as the 2020 RNC finishes up their events. The 1920 convention in Chicago has become one of the few things for which President Harding is known today; the reason for this is the common usage of the phrase "smoke-filled room" to describe how Harding (who was almost a non-factor in the convention up until late in the game) was practically handed the nomination as a compromise between shady party insiders. The truth about the Republicans' primary campaigning and the viability of Harding at the 1920 convention involves far more nuance than the simple "smoke-filled room" description used in most high school textbooks of today; however, there is still a kernel of truth to the matter.
Senator Frank Brandegee of Connecticut described the Republican race for the nomination that year as follows:
"There ain't any first-raters this year ... we got a lot of second-raters and Warren Harding is the best of the second-raters." [1]
Except he wasn't.
There were multiple candidates in the primaries who displayed a more memorable and forceful message and persona than Senator Harding of Ohio. The problem for most candidates was the sheer number of competitors they were facing. To his credit, Harding understood this issue and is known to have said to his friend Frank E. Scobey,
"It has been my own judgement not to go at it too vigorously in order to reach the high tide of our publicity movement until late in the campaign. Some enterprises make such a booming start that they fizzle out later on." [2]
Harding faced three fairly strong candidates and a handful of "favorite sons." In the primaries, former Army Chief of Staff Leonard Wood from New Hampshire dominated the eastern United States while California Senator Hiram Johnson took much of the populist west. Wood, a close friend to the late Theodore Roosevelt, snatched up plenty of support from the progressive wing of the Republican Party, which had mostly reconciled since the Taft-TR split in 1912. However, Wood was not the only candidate to enjoy wide progressive and populist support. The tendentious Johnson was, as one historian described him, "the most progressive, indeed the most radical, not only in politics but in temperament." [3] The conservative "Old Guard" of the Republican Party had a reasonably strong candidate in Illinois' Frank Orren Lowden. He did not succeed in winning large swaths of the nation's primaries like Wood or Johnson, but he brought sizeable delegate support to the convention in June through state conventions. The primary system that we know today was not so widely accepted back then, and looking back on a candidate's performance merely in the primaries gives a slanted picture of what eventually occurred.
Harding was discouraged by a weak showing of support prior to the convention. His wife Florence kept the train rolling when it appeared that Harding would quit. "Warren Harding, what do you think you're doing," she scolded him.
"Give up? ... You can't; think of your friends in Ohio ... we're in this fight until Hell freezes over." [4]
It appeared that Leonard Wood had seized a commanding lead as delegates began to arrive in Chicago. Outward appearances were shattered when an investigation into campaign funding turned up the fact that Wood was "buying the presidential nomination with his fat-cat bankroll," and that Lowden may have been giving bribes; "two canceled checks to Missouri delegates who were pledged to Lowden surfaced." [5] These scandalous revelations helped to create a deadlock once the convention got underway. It was then, as delegates began to get squirmy, that a particular comment previously voiced by Harding campaign manager Harry M. Daugherty began to look like prophecy.
"I don't expect Senator Harding to be nominated on the first, second, or third ballot, but I think we can well afford to take chances that about eleven minutes after 2 o'clock on Friday morning at the Convention, when fifteen or twenty men, somewhat weary, are sitting around a table, some one of them will say, 'who can we nominate?' At that decisive time the friends of Senator Harding can suggest him and can afford to abide by the result." [6]
His comment would evolve and be misquoted to refer to a mythologized "smoke-filled room" and a planned scheme to steal the nomination for Warren Harding; in reality, it was probably a largely flippant prediction made to sound confident about Harding's slim chances and to boast about campaign tactics. Daugherty's message described common strategic practice
for lesser-known candidates with fewer enemies than the big names. While the wheeling and dealing behind the scenes at nominating conventions is a now relic of the past, to somehow disqualify Warren Harding's presidency as stemming from a corrupt bargain ignores the nature of conventions in the earlier American party systems. There is a particular meeting which occurred from around 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. on Saturday morning which somewhat resembles Daugherty's description, and historians have latched onto this event as part of presidential folklore. Harding biographer John W. Dean explains that the people at the meeting "had no power to tell any delegation how to vote," and that Harding had just one "real supporter" in attendance who left relatively early on.
It is my assessment that those who study Harding's rise to power often give Harry Daugherty the treatment of a political demigod who was able to play "4-D chess" at the Chicago convention of 1920 and throughout the Harding presidential run. He was a competent campaign manager, but he had far less power to make major change at the convention than his hubris conveyed. Those who read his statements can be easily seduced by the shrewd factional insider into believing that he picked up a deflated dark horse senator and worked him flawlessly like a puppet all the way to the White House. Warren G. Harding was no puppet; however, he was no philosopher-king either. As shown earlier, Harding was well aware that he would not have a traditional or flashy path to victory, and he played the politician's game of handshaking and collaboration as well as any other. The "smoke-filled room" did occur in 1920, in a sense. It also occurred dozens of times on dozens of nights at dozens of conventions in American history. The Republican Party's compromising in 1920 has an important place in history, but more emphasis should be placed instead on the fact that Harding had made himself into the right man at the right time to make the deadlocked delegates agree. He was a mild-mannered senator of a key swing state who had offended no one but the Democrats. He could speak well to the public, but he did not give off the perceived arrogance and academic idealism of the Wilson administration. His stance on the League of Nations was perfectly vague so as to unite a recently fractured party with varying stances on the coming foreign policy of the United States. America was not looking for a "first-rater" as normally envisioned. If Warren Harding was perceived as a "second-rater," much of the voting public saw that as a plus after two terms of high-speed progressivism.