Talking to Marketplace Radio, former Senate Majority Leader turned lobbyist Tom Daschle is candid about the attractions of political office:

Hobson: What do you miss about your time in the public sector, if anything at this point? You’ve been in the private sector for a while.

Daschle: Well, to be honest, I miss the power. The senators have an enormous amount of power, probably second only to the president of the United States.

He’s doing OK in what Marketplace laughingly calls “the private sector” – they mean “the rent-seeking sector” – having made some $5.3 million in his first two years for “providing strategic advice” at a lobbying/law firm. But he still misses the power.