He keeps a very low international profile, but to Republicans in Washington he is known as "Dr. NO," the man who stalled President Bush's energy bill, then opposed Republican efforts to ban cloning research, and finally smashed the White House economic stimulus plan (that aimed to stimulate the wealth of the richest Americans.)

Daschle's star is rising very fast in the nation's capital, and the Republicans are furious and worried. As Weekly Standard writer David Brooks noted in a December 31 article, "The next 12 months could be ugly. The political mood is sour. Democrats are going to wage a relentless war on the Bush tax cuts. Tom Daschle looks like Bambi but he bites like Jaws."

In terms of raw political power in the United States, Daschle is second only to President Bush. He is a man that everyone at the World Economic Forum should know and watch. No one should be fooled by the image he seeks to cultivate. His web site wistfully describes how he loves to drive alone across his home state stopping "at Elks clubs, cattle auctions, health clinics, schools, cafes, police stations or anywhere else that people gather, to hear what is on their minds."

Tom Daschle, 54, U.S. Senate Majority Leader, is smart, sophisticated and brilliant--he entered the Senate in 1986 and by 1995 he was already Minority Leader. Daschle, as President Bush recently discovered in promoting his economic recovery program, can be deceptive, and his smiling soft appearance is a mere façade that hides an iron will to crush starkly Republican programs. If the President wants to get his massive two-trillion-dollar budget through Congress this year he will have to do a lot of praying. David Brooks added in his article that it has been a stiff contest to see who would win the title of chief cynic in the Congress, "but Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle has smugly walked away with the prize. His behavior over the past weeks has been a case study in putting party before country. Machiavelli could sit at his knee."

World leaders from government and business at the Forum are more familiar with Democrat senators like Kennedy, Lieberman, Clinton and Biden (who will be talking to the Forum about his recent trip to Afghanistan--he found it desperately sad, says an aide). But all of them take their Senate marching orders from Daschle and it is to him that they look for leadership in this U.S. election year where one-third of the seats in the Senate and all 435 seats in the House of Representatives will be contested.

He was born in Aberdeen, South Dakota and was the first person in his family to graduate from university (the University of South Dakota). In the Senate he learned the ropes rapidly at the knee of George L. Mitchell, arguably the most effective Senate Majority Leader in recent times. Like Mitchell, Daschle knows how to build coalitions, forge compromises, use power selectively and earn respect. Nobody works harder.

The biggest political coup of 2001 was Daschle's ability to convince Vermont Republican Senator Jim Jeffords to switch sides and become a Democrat. Suddenly, Senate Majority leader Trent Lott was stripped of his power and Daschle was off to the races, reorganizing the Senate and discarding the Republican agenda. He has backed Bush in the war on terrorism, but made it clear that he sees the economic recovery as the key political battle-ground.

In coming months he will seek to build on opinion poll findings that show that despite voters' overwhelming support for.

President Bush, they would rather see Democrats lead Congress. Polls conducted in mid-November for the Democratic Leadership Council by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates and published in the new edition of The New Democrat Blueprint, show that there are more independent voters than ever before. They tend to live in the suburbs, have middle-class incomes and are aged between 35 and 50. And they are the people that Daschle will be going after in the election campaign.

If he is successful and the Democrats make considerable gains in November's elections, then he'll be on the cover of every magazine, the foreign press will wake up and realize he could be a serious presidential candidate and, who knows, he may attend the next World Economic Forum.