Smoke-filled room
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A smoke-filled room is a term used in the United States to describe a secret political gathering or decision-making process. The phrase is generally used to suggest a cabal of powerful or well-connected individuals meeting privately to nominate an unpopular 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 secret and apparently very smoky meeting at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago.[1][2]
The term is often used figuratively rather than literally, particularly with increasing restrictions on tobacco smoking in the United States and elsewhere in the English-speaking world.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Wolfe, Gerard R., Chicago In and Around the Loop: Walking Tours of Architecture and History, 1996, McGraw-Hill, p.176.
- ^ http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/3217.html
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