Take a look at the top item on our Intrade quote board, on the lower left margin of this page. (We are an Intrade affiliate.) With just a few days to go, it appears that French voters will decisively reject the EU Constitution. It wouldn’t surprise me.
Lex and I went back and forth on this topic in email. I said, essentially: the sooner the EU fails the better for everyone. Lex responded:
Right. The EU as a free trade zone makes sense. As a single political entity it makes no sense. They need to rethink what they really want and need to do collectively. This current proposed “Constitution” is a farce. Look at it.
Here [pdf file]
It’s an atrocity. It is over 200 pages long. That is not a Constitution. That is not even a statute. It is a regulatory code. It is too long even for that. Lunacy.
About 18 pages.
Right.
–collectively–
Change it to collective, and we’re right on the money.
EUSSR.
1st one didn’t work, but the “right” people will now be in place to make it work.
Via EU Referendum comment:
The Market Center Blog says, quoting the left-wing New Republic:
“According to a Boston Consulting Group survey, one in five U.S. companies currently in Germany is planning to relocate at least some operations. Thus,thanks to Schröder and the SPD, Germany is not only an economically dicey investment but a politically dicey one as well.”
Surprise, surprise! I always thought that OUI vote was playing the anti-American card. Now it looks like it is the NON vote that is playing is the ace of spades.
EU constitution will be defeated … but for wrong reasons. The impact will be felt worldwide as Europe seems to turn even more inward looking.
I dearly love the U.S. constitution but were we starting from scratch there are a few changes we might consider.
I’d like a three-house legislature. Representatives, directly elected, again. Senators elected by the state legislatures, as before. And, I think, a small House of Commissioners, some few appointed by the executive, some more promoted by the Representatives, and some medium number awarded by the Senate. It would be a lifetime posting, but the minimum age would be 45 — older even than the President. The House of Commissioners would be tasked to consider all legislation some 20 years after initial enactment, and at 20 year intervals thereafter — and any statute failing to win the votes of a majority of the Commissioners (not a quorum thereof, but an absolute majority of sitting Commissioners) would “sunset” or expire at the close of the Congress. Note that the lazier this group is, the more likely the other two Houses will “fall behind” — unable to create new law as fast as the Commissioners retire it.
I would specify in the constitution that the President, the Congress, the Supreme Court and each Cabinet-level headquarters be sited in widely dispersed cities — no one plague nor natural disaster nor attack would decapitate such a capital.
A clause prohibiting astroturf and the designated hitter rule would be amusing but perhaps a bit too much.
Anonymous,
I agree that the US Constitution might be improved on, but consider how well it has held up. Now consider the turgid bureaucratic position paper that’s being marketed as a constitution for Europe. Does it have the slightest chance of being similarly durable and successful?