In this high-ceilinged cathedral of a hearing room, one of the Congressmen, Rep Bob Barr talked of a ``cancer on the presidency.'' Another, Rep Jerrold Nadler said the issue could divide the country like nothing since the Vietnam War.

Rep Asa Hutchinson said he was a University of Arkansas law student during Watergate and one of the professors there, invoking the majesty of the law, ``was William Jefferson Clinton.''

Rep Zoe Lofgren said Congress should pay more heed to the discussions of James Madison and George Mason than to those of Linda Tripp and Monica Lewinsky. She suggested the founding fathers wouldn't think what Clinton did was a crime high enough to justify his impeachment.

Most of these Congressmen were in their teens or in college back when Democratic Rep Peter Rodino ofNew Jersey, making no secret of his own distaste for the task, summoned the house judiciary committee he chaired in the summer of 1974 to consider the removal of a president.

Not without agony, the Rodino committee voted to recommend impeachment, but Richard Nixon spared the house from acting: he released his ``smoking gun'' tape and resigned the presidency.

Those days were on every mind. Only one member of the Hyde committee, Rep John Conyers, son of a Detroit autoworker, had served under Rodino. Then a firebrand for ridding the nation of Nixon, he now opposes impeachment.

``This is not Watergate,'' the ranking Democrat said. ``It's an extramarital affair.''

Chairman Henry Hyde, who came to Washington the year after Nixon left, opened the proceedings quoting Rodino: ``We cannot turn away out of partisanship or convenience from problems that are now our responsibility, our inescapable responsibility, to consider.''

This is usually a highly partisan committee but these were solemn proceedings, andso, for this moment, were the members. No voices rose in anger. The Congressmen acted as if history were their witness.

Laughter erupted once, when Rep Howard Coble recounted the mixed signals he'd been getting from constituents. One said he shouldn't bother coming home if he doesn't vote to impeach President Clinton, another said if he didn't vote to close down the hearing she would never vote for him ``implying,'' said Coble to the amusement of his fellow politicians, ``that she had voted for me previously.''

But there was no sex in Watergate, and that difference is one the 1998 lawmakers occasionally had to acknowledge.

No one -- no Republican, no Democrat -- defended Clinton's conduct with Lewinsky or his testimony while under oath. The issue was whether the President's behaviour constituted events worthy of impeachment.

Rep Robert Wexler, who was 13 years old the last time Congress considered removing a president, said he is not proud of the way Clinton ``cheapened our national discourse,confused our children, disillusioned our idealists and empowered our cynics.'' But he was proud of the constitution, he said, and he waved a blue-bound copy to make his argument that Clinton's behavior fell short of warranting removal.

``The President had an affair. He lied about it,'' said Wexler.

``Does anyone reasonably believe that this amounts to subversion of government? Does anyone reasonably believe that this is what the founding fathers were talking about?''

And that's one of the questions that ultimately -- probably not until next year -- will have to find its answer from the 37 lawmakers in this room.