Not that President Bush wouldn't have had the bipartisan backing of Republicans and Democrats alike last week when he digressed from the most important speech of his new presidency to recognize a dying man.

"Our prayers tonight are with one of your own who is engaged in his own fight against cancer - a fine representative and a good man, Congressman Joe Moakley," Bush said. As his colleagues rose for a long, loud standing ovation, the "flabbergasted" Massachusetts Democrat rose and bowed awkwardly.

Bowing is something they didn't practice much in the gritty South Boston community where Moakley grew up. But as he said later, recalling how it felt to gaze across the affection-packed House that has been his home for 38 years, "sometimes you just well up."

A beefy man with a white mane and florid skin, the 73-year-old Moakley looks like he's glowing with health. But it's actually the blood transfusions. Moakley has to take one "every now and then," so he can keep breathing right. These days, he gets winded easily.

Moakley, a widower with no children, has incurable leukemia. When the doctor gave him the verdict in January, Moakley says he was told: "If I were you, I'd take a couple months off and do what I really love to do."

"Doc, I've been doing what I love," Moakley told him. "There's no place that I really want to go."

So Moakley continues to show up at the Capitol at 8 a.m. every day, to read the newspapers and breakfast in the cafeteria, exercise his famous wit and work on legislation. "I never wanted to be president or governor or in the Senate," he says. "I just wanted to be the congressman from the 9th District."

In an era when it has become fashionable for even politicians to mock politics, this proud protege of House Speaker Tip O'Neill is a reminder of a different time. "He's so much a part of this institution, it's hard to imagine Congress without him," Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., says.

Moakley says politics should never be a grudge match. "It's a game," he says. Bush certainly scored some easy points when he called on Congress to increase National Institutes of Health funding as a tribute to Moakley: The lawmakers were already on track to meet that Clinton administration goal. But there was no mistaking the genuineness of the emotion that erupted when the conservative Republican president hailed the liberal Democratic congressman.

Underneath the political labels and policy fights are human beings who become friends. Moakley has a lot of them. From liberal Democrat Barney Frank to conservative Republican Dick Armey, the verdict is unanimous. "He's just one of the most enjoyable people to be around," says Frank, a Massachusetts colleague. He still cherishes the subtle way that Moakley, long before Frank publicly acknowledged he was gay, let him know that he knew.

"We were talking about someone who was gay," Frank recalls, "and Joe said, 'Hey, not everybody likes vanilla. That's why Howard Johnson has 28 flavors.' It was his very gentle way of saying, 'Hey, don't worry about it.' "

Armey remembers Moakley's gentlemanliness back in the 1980s, when the Texan was a member of the Republican minority fighting a lonely battle on military base closings.

Moakley, a member of the powerful Rules Committee, "was always kind. He was always considerate," says Armey, now the House majority leader. "I guess I never quit appreciating that."

When the Democrats controlled Congress, Moakley was chairman of the Rules Committee. Now he's the top-ranking Democrat. Last month, his colleagues on the panel, which decides which legislation goes to the floor and which does not, gave him an odd good luck charm.

Moakley had disclosed his illness with characteristically unsentimental humor. "I went for a checkup and the guy said, 'Don't buy any green bananas,' " he told Boston reporters. When Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier, R-Calif., presented him with a bunch, Moakley responded with another quip. "If I could trade it for the gavel, I'd be very happy," he said.

In addition to four cancers, Moakley has had a hip replacement and a liver transplant. To him, that's just fodder for another joke. "Barney Frank said I'm the only guy in the House who doesn't have to worry about term limits, because most of me hasn't been here that long," he cracks.

Moakley, who won his last election with 78 percent of the vote, has spent almost his entire life in public service. He began at age 15, when he forged papers so he could enlist in the Navy to fight in World War II. After returning from the Pacific theater, he served in the Massachusetts state House and Senate and the Boston City Council before succeeding House Speaker John McCormack in Congress in 1972.

Moakley says he made his grim prognosis public "just to allow people to get used to it," and, political junkie that he is, to allow potential candidates for his job to get ready to run.

The hardest part, he says, was having to say the words, "I will not be a candidate" in 2002.

Update: Congressman Moakely lost his valiant battle with leukemia on Memorial Day May 28th, 2001. We extend our heart-felt sympathy to his friends and family.

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