In a rare moment last week, Representative John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, joined Republican leaders at a media conference, siding with them on how the House should handle the potential impeachment inquiry concerning President Clinton.
He agreed that the report of the independent counsel, Mr Kenneth Starr, should be made public. He agreed that Congress must put aside partisan politics on the issue. Still, he cautioned: "We are not planning for an impeachment . . . A report is not the final word. A report is a report."
Mr Conyers, a civil rights champion and a founder of the Congressional Black Caucus, has been thrust into the national spotlight for a monumental battle on another front. The house veteran of nearly 34 years is the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, the Republican-controlled panel that will determine whether to ask the house to launch an impeachment inquiry of a Democratic president. Mr Conyers, the only committee member who participated in the impeachment hearings that led to former President Richard Nixon's resignation, will play a key role.
"He's an aggressive partisan who is going to speak what's on his mind," said Mr Marshall Whittmann, director of congressional relations for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington. "If Clinton has one last defender, it will be John Conyers."
Answering Republicans who were stressing the seriousness of Mr Starr's charges that the president's statements under oath had been lying or misleading, Mr Conyers said that if Congress was subject to impeachment for lying or misleading, "we're all done for. We won't have a quorum".
Despite such disagreements, he said, he's optimistic that the process could be fair because in such a serious situation legislators could not afford to "sink" to partisan levels.