Several months before the Republican National Convention of 1920, the Ohio political boss Hairy Micajah Daugherly made the offhand prophecy that none of the leading candidates could muster enough votes to win the nomination, and that alter the delegates had reached a dead end, a group of fifteen party elders would then get together in some smoke-filled hotel room. There, bleary-eyed and perspiring profusely—at about 2:11 in the morning—they would pick the party’s candidate, almost inevitably the next President of the United States. That man. Daugherty predicted, would turn out to be his friend and protégé, Senator Warren Gamaliel Harding of Ohio.

Daugherty s prediction was uncannily accurate. There have been a number of versions of the “fifteen men in a smoke-filled room,” and the casual phrase has taken its place in American political folklore as a synonym for cynical electoral manipulation. Vei when Daugherty made it, his remark seemed no more than a politician’s quick quip. Harding was still the darkest of dark horses, a scarcely conceivable candidate. He lacked even the complete Ohio delegation.

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