Actually, from many thousands of kilometers away and sketchy information, my take on the EU constitutional vote was that it wasn't so much a rejection of a necessary (?) constitution, but rather a rejection of Maastricht and Nice. Of the two, Maastricht was by FAR the worse--it was nothing less than the end of modern Europe--no WONDER people were so angry. "Remember the I35W bridge--who needs terrorists when there are Republicans"
The problem with that vote, of course, is that in practice they voted against the new bits that they usually liked (strengthened European Parliament, charter of human rights, etc...) but in FAVOR of the Maastricht and Nice Treaty, because these remain in force in the absence of the new Constitution.
They voted against their explicit goals, something that I still am angry about. And they make euroskepticism good politics and most of our new leaders are thus weakly pro-European, which only compounds the problem, as national selfishness (which was never low, starting with the French) has vastly increased. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
