Linda Feldmann and David T. Cook take a stab at profiling the new chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in this issue of Christian Science Monitor. They lead with this:

Rahm Emanuel entered the room with a résumé as outsized as any second-term congressman: top aide to President Clinton, millionaire investment banker, professional ballet dancer, volunteer at an Israeli supply base during the Gulf War.

He's also the guy who, while working at the Democratic Party's congressional recruitment committee in the 1980s, once famously sent a rotting fish to a pollster who he felt had given him bad numbers. Mr. Emanuel now represents Chicago's north side - the old district of another larger-than-life Chicago pol, Dan Rostenkowski - in the US House of Representatives, and has risen quickly in party ranks. And Congressman Emanuel has mellowed since his suffer-no-fools-gladly days in the White House, say friends and political observers.

But, as the newly minted chair of that same Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee he once worked for - known around town just as the DCCC - and, increasingly, a leading voice for the party on policy, the edgy and brash Emanuel is still what the party is banking on as it seeks to retake control of the House.

Check out the rest of this piece for enjoyable Friday afternoon reading. The key is that although the odds are low that the Democrats will be able to pull off an upset in 2006, with someone like Emanuel at the helm, anything is possible.