FOR years, Tom Daschle had bucked the odds in South Dakota. In the staunchly Republican state, the Democrat was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1978, and then to the Senate in 1986.
Over the years, his career took off. It was a surprise to me that the Senator from a state with only 750,000 people was first named as Senate Minority Leader in 1994, and then as Senate Majority Leader from 2001 to early 2003. It was an example of how much clout this politician from an agricultural state had in Congress.
But his fall began in 2004, when he lost re-election to Republican John Thune. The final nail in the coffin of his career came on Tuesday, when he had to pull out over a tax scandal after being nominated by President Barack Obama for the post of Secretary of Health and Human Services.
I first met him in 1986, when I was the state and local news editor of the student newspaper at his alma mater, South Dakota State University. He was campaigning for the Senate on campus and had come down to the office for a one-on-one interview.
The first thing that struck me was how short he was, by American standards. He was about my height, barely topping 5' 8", and in a country where 60 million of the population suffer from obesity, he was slight. His photos just didn't attest to how "normal" he looked.
He was unassuming, patiently answering my questions about what he intended to do for young Americans - despite me being a foreign student - and why college kids should send him to the Senate. This was my first brush with a national politician - having only interviewed the state governor and politicians before this - and I was very impressed by how humble he was. Late that year, he was elected to the Senate.
The following year, I had another interview with him after I took over the editorship of the student newspaper. He was brimming with ideas for the state, and I could sense that great things awaited this junior senator from South Dakota.
After I graduated in 1987, I joined the newspaper in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, as a copy editor. After three years, my company had wanted to keep me on, but my H-1 work visa was ending. The company had set my Green Card application in motion, but after being rejected, Daschle's office in South Dakota tried to help out.
The Senator wrote an appeal letter on my behalf to the US Labour Department, and from what I heard from a friend of mine who was working in his office, even offered to call on my behalf. Needless to say, I was quite surprised by how far he was willing to go for someone. Unfortunately, his appeal didn't work, and I came to join The Straits Times instead in 1991.
Over the years, I have been following his rise to greater power in Washington, and was shocked when he lost the re-election. Talking to my friends in South Dakota, they say that the people in the state still hold him in high regard, almost as revered as George McGovern, the South Dakotan who lost to Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential election.
Daschle would probably have made a good Secretary of Health and Human Services, I think - if he had not fallen victim to politics in this latest tax scandal.