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The one-vote margin gave him the power to set the agenda in the Senate, but he falls well short of the numbers needed to pass Democratic bills.

Mr Daschle has spoken whimsically about his future, allowing as how he just might run for president. But, then again, he said, he just might quit the Senate instead of seeking re-election in 2004.

The implication is that this is a man without the burning presidential ambition attributed to most senators as soon as they take their seats.

Yet there is a suspicion that underneath the mild manner lingers enough cold steel to take on the Bush White House.

Although a new face to many, Mr Daschle has been in Washington for 30 years. He started in 1972 as a Senate staffer. Six years later, he ran for the House, winning a seat by 139 votes.

Most of his races have been close. When he was elected Democratic leader in 1994, he won by one vote, just as he now leads the Senate majority by a one-vote margin.

In this tenuous position, he must survive a collective battering by the opposition hit squads, which have selected him as the face of the "obstructionist" Democratic party.

Although Republicans have not yet tried to blame Mr Daschle for the recession, he has been attacked by no less than Vice-President Richard Cheney for blocking a package the White House says will stimulate the economy.

Many of the assaults are not pretty. His opposition to Republican domestic programmes has been portrayed as unpatriotic. One conservative group ran an advertisement (pictured above) in a home state newspaper showing the Senate leader with Saddam Hussein, president of Iraq, because he opposes oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The cagey and low-key Mr Daschle generally ignores the venom but expresses his "disappointment" about one attack or another. "The rhetoric is way off base, and I'm disappointed people are using it," is his formula response.

After the September 11 terrorist strikes, he worked closely with the president on anti-terrorism legislation, an emergency spending bill and an airport security act.

He frequently praised Mr Bush and his advisers for doing "a superb job" in the war.

But he has taken the offensive against the $1.35 trillion tax package, which was passed before the Democratics took the majority.

It had led, he said, to "the most dramatic fiscal deterioration in our nation's history".

His most serious challenge is in uniting and leading an historically fractious party, which has its own fiscal conservatives and unreconstructed liberals.

Hugging the political centre, he refused to back a delay in the tax cut, knowing full well that would be decried as a tax increase by the opposition. Twelve Democratic senators face re-election this year and six of them voted for Mr Bush's tax cut.

He stood at the sidelines while Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts made a passionate case for holding back about $350bn in tax breaks for the wealthy in order to pay for health care for the elderly, education and other pressing needs.

Mr Daschle's unrelenting focus is on the autumn elections, when the out-of-power party usually makes gains. September 11 has changed the equation.

Mr Bush, who in ordinary times might be vulnerable to charges of inaction on many campaign promises - such as "fixing" social security, providing prescription drugs for the elderly - is still hovering around the 85 per cent level in the polls for his leadership in the war.

The game for Mr Daschle is not basketball but a delicate dance - sometimes with the president, sometimes challenging him on appointments and initiatives Democrats find most egregious.