Smoke-filled room
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A smoke-filled room is a term used in the United States to describe a gathering of minds secluded from the general public, often insinuating that the majority of people in the room is comprised of old, white males smoking cigars. This term became popular when for the first time, a newspaper reporter was allowed to enter the United States Supreme Court's original offices underneath the Capitol and described the smoke-filled room.
An alternative etymology is that it was used by the Associated Press to describe the process by which Warren G. Harding was nominated for the Republican candidate for President at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago in 1920.[link]
The term is often used by those involved in the political process with a sort of "good old days" connotation. Often the enormous duration and expense of modern political campaigns and increased partisan polarization cause political figures and operatives to pine for a simpler process with fewer variables. Those of the older generation of political operatives, consultants and candidates alike, frequently feel that they have lost an element of control that they once had over the political process.
With the increasing pervasiveness of restrictions on tobacco smoking in the United States and elsewhere in the English-speaking world, it seems likely that the phrase will be used in more of a figurative than a literal sense.
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