If there is anything to know with certainty about the person who will be sworn in as President of the United States on January 20th, it is this: he is a man who has made a career out of being underestimated.

His past is strewn with the wrecked political futures of those who saw him as dumb, distracted and insignificant.

The down-home image that won the American electorate this year - slightly loopy, plain-talking, non-intellectual by any measure - is an image that has been cultivated for years, say those who have known George W. Bush in Texas.

It is an image that was formed after Mr Bush lost his first campaign for Congress back in 1978. Running against Democrat Kent Hance, Mr Bush bored audiences with discussions of things like anti-inflationary economic policy.

"He was so darn intelligent that a lot of what he said went over people's heads," says a Republican activist in Odessa, Texas.

"He's learned to explain things a little better since then."

Mr Bush lost that race 53 to 47 per cent. But he learned a lot from Mr Hance, a joke-telling good old boy who charmed the voters.

Mr Hance served several years in Congress, getting to know another Democratic Congressman named Al Gore. Eventually Mr Hance returned to practise law in Texas and he and Mr Bush became friends. This year, Mr Hance supported Mr Bush for president.

Speaking to the New York Times back in July about the election, Mr Hance had this to say: "I'm convinced that Bush is going to beat him. I served with Gore and I know him and I like him. But I'd hate to ride from Lubbock to Los Angeles with him. If you rode from Lubbock to Los Angeles with Bush, it would be loads of fun. Gore would be saying things like, `I see some mountains'."

Born on July 6th, 1946, in Connecticut, Mr Bush grew up in Midland, Texas, until he was 12 and his family moved to Houston. His Texas upbringing is in sharp contrast to the elder George Bush, who despite his years in Texas, is still perceived rightly as a wealthy Connecticut blueblood.

To understand the younger Mr Bush, it is well to understand Midland, a fact that Mr Bush's friends alluded to years ago when they were freer to speak about him.

A conservative stretch of west Texas, Midland is a dusty oil town of tumbleweeds and rattlesnakes, a place that it could generously be said does not support a postcard industry. Its population was 25,000 when Mr Bush was growing up and is 100,000 today.

Mr Bush left Texas to attend the trio of private schools and colleges that define America's elite - Andover, Yale and Harvard - but he always returned.

The oil boom in Midland brought educated people, engineers and geologists, to the area in the 1950s. But it still was a conservative place of traditional family values. (The Texas saying goes that you raise hell in Odessa and a family in Midland.)

When Mr Bush married Laura Welch, a good girl from an old Texas family whom he had first met when they were in the seventh grade together, they moved into an 847 sq ft Midland house on Easter Egg Row, a street where every house was identical but painted different colours.

They were reportedly in love, but the political convenience of the marriage escaped no one.

People who have known Mr Bush all his life say he is indeed no intellectual and has little passion for reading. His passion since childhood has been baseball. His governor's office in Austin houses 250 baseballs signed by sports figures. Asked to name his hero, he mentions pitcher Nolan Ryan.

Asked the toughest challenge he has ever faced, he mentions firing the manager of the baseball team he once owned. Asked his greatest regret, he says trading superstar Sammy Sosa to the Chicago Cubs was a mistake.

During the campaign, Mr Bush made no secret of his predilection for delegating responsibility. Unlike Mr Gore or Bill Clinton, he is not a policy wonk who will spend hours delving into any substantive issue. In fact, his personal calender from the governor's office, obtained by the media during the campaign, showed a man who rarely works after 5 p.m., takes two-hour lunches, and rarely spent more than 15 minutes reviewing the voluminous appeals of death-row inmates seeking clemency.

By all accounts, Mr Bush is a nice and fun guy. His presidency will be defined by those around him, a fact that became obvious during the last six weeks. Leading the effort to resolve the election were close associates of his father: former White House Chief-of-Staff James Baker and conservative litigator Theodore Olson. Condoleeza Rice and Gen Colin Powell, expected to be named National security Adviser and Secretary of State respectively, are far closer to George Bush the elder.

George W. Bush will be President of the United States; who will actually run the country is not yet known.