The French "Non!"

France's vote against the European constitution may have resulted from electoral tactics on the part of the "Oui" campaign, which mailed a copy of the proposed EU constitution to every voter, accompanied by a slick PR blitz by celebrities. Its incredible length--over 200 pages--would have been enough to convince anyone to vote against it. If the EU tries this trick again, they might want to limit their revised constitution to the length of the US model, and precede the election with something like our "Federalist Papers" debate, featuring actual intellectuals arguing the pros and cons in the press, a true debate, which is what the French used to be famous for, at least when I went to college a generation ago...