Free Republic

Nowadays, the “smoke-filled room” is mostly just a metaphor—but there was a real room that started it all. Well, sort of. The compelling image of the smoke-filled room, a “place of political intrigue and chicanery, where candidates were selected by party bosses in cigar-chewing session,” per William Safire, arose during the 1920 Republican convention. That year, Sen. Warren G. Harding of Ohio was the come-from-behind nominee for president, selected after ten ballots. According to historian David Pietrusza, author of 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents, the room in question is often credited with the phrase “because the people who...

In any primary, there are a thousand questions to ask, but the first one – yes, the primary one – must be this: What year is it? No, not just “is this a presidential year or a midterm election,” though that’s important too... But what year is it, historically? That is, is it most analogous to a year we’ve seen before, or is it unlike any prior election, so we shouldn’t bother to see if we can learn from parallels? It is often said that there is nothing new under the sun, that we’re always fighting the same war, that...