America's checks and balances in action

Washington

THREE years after he was forced to resign from office because of his role in the Watergate scandal when it became clear that he could face certain impeachment by Congress, former US president Richard Nixon gave a series of television interviews to the renowned British journalist David Frost. During the 1977 television interviews (which later became the subject of both a Broadway play and a Hollywood film), Mr Frost succeeded in extracting an apology from the disgraced president for breaking the law when he was in the White House. (Both Mr Nixon and Mr Frost have since died.)

Pointing to several instances during which the president's actions - such as green lighting a break-in into the offices of the Democratic Party's offices in the Watergate Apartments in Washington, DC - Mr Frost asked Mr Nixon whether he thought that there were no limits to what a president can do, even if the president …