While the decision of the House of Representatives to sue President Barack Obama may be unprecedented, it is hardly surprising.

Four decades have passed, but Watergate is still fresh in the public memory. Richard Nixon did not believe he had committed any wrong. By any standards a great man, Nixon ‘vindicated’ himself after he was no more in the White House by making an extraordinary comeback as a writer and freelance diplomat. Bill Clinton had a charisma of his own.

If Nixon made history by effecting a rapprochement with China — Henry Kissinger flew to Beijing from Nathiagali — Mr Clinton’s tour de force was the ‘peace of the brave’ that saw Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin shake hands on a White House lawn in 1993.

But then came Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky, and the Republicans began to sharpen their knives. Accused of perjury and obstructing justice, Mr Clinton was lucky to survive impeachment in the Senate because of lack of a two-thirds majority.

Several years later, it is the Republicans again who want to go after a Democrat president. Understandably, the Democrats have reacted angrily, with Nancy Pelosi, a former House speaker, calling the move “sickening”.

President Obama has been equally derisive about the proposed lawsuit, saying that instead of suing him for doing his job, Congressmen should do theirs.

It is noteworthy that the move to sue the president concerns Mr Obama’s health reforms, or Obamacare, which have hurt America’s powerful medical insurance lobby.

And yet, despite the politics, one cannot but admire the strength of America’s constitutional institutions. The two parties may take bipartisan rivalry to absurd limits, but as history from the ’70s to the 21st century shows, it is the American people’s commitment to democracy that weathered the crises.

Watergate and the Lewinsky scandal rocked the US, but they did not derail or weaken democracy. Unfortunately, the point to note is also the unmistakable decline in the quality of US politics. It is this aspect that should be cause for concern.

Published in Dawn, August 2nd, 2014