Legal Commentary

Although little public attention was paid to Ohio's Senator Warren Harding, as early as February his manager, Harry Daugherty, had predicted that the three strong candidates [General Leonard Wood, Governor Frank Lowden, and Senator Hiram Johnson] would kill one another off and that Harding would get the nod from the Old Guard leaders who would dominate the convention. After the convention deadlocked, Daugherty forecast, the winner would be chosen by a gathering of "fifteen or twenty men, somewhat weary" at "about eleven minutes after two o'clock on Friday morning."

The Republican convention came close to following Daugherty's script. On Thursday, when the balloting began, the three leading candidates quickly established a deadlock, and Lodge recessed the convention until the next day. At a suite in the Blackstone Hotel that night, a group of party leaders, mostly senators, debated what to do; although not all agreed, the majority decided on Harding. "This man Harding is no world beater," they told reporters, "but we think he is the best of the bunch." At a little after two o'clock on Friday morning, Harding entered the "smoke-filled room" in the Blackstone and was asked for and gave assurances that nothing in his background would embarrass the Republican party. On the next day, after several ballots, he won the Republican nomination. "Well," said Harding, "we drew to a pair of deuces and filled."

The general impression was that Harding, while an amiable fellow, was not up to the task. [Apparently Harding agreed with this assessment, later lamenting "I knew that this job would be too much for me."].

A Democrat said of Harding's speeches that they "leave the impression of an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea; sometimes these meandering words would actually capture a straggling thought and bear it triumphantly, a pioneer in their midst, until it died of servitude and overwork." [what a brilliant put down!].

After his election, Harding appointed a group of hometown friends to top government positions despite their lack of qualifications, several of whom went on to engage in blatant corruption on a spectacular scale (later going to jail). Midway through his term, Harding died of a cerebral embolism.

Compared to the good old days of the "smoke-filled room," the super delegates of today seem bland and tame. Let's hope they exercise better judgment (although it must be said that Harding won by a huge margin).

Full post as published by Balkinization on March 06, 2008 (boomark / email).