What happened, of course, was that 70 percent of the French voters didn't bother to express themselves on the issue. Those that did leaned overwhelmingly in favor of the reduced term, by a 3-1 majority. But the impression left isn't that the republic engaged in a sophisticated act of reform. Rather, that the French voting public is overwhelmingly unconcerned with political arrangements. This reflects, in part, disillusion with Chirac's alleged involvement in a payoff scandal and the derivative involvement of Jospin in failing to publicize it.
The reaction to the vote is at several levels. The first is disgust over French political irresponsibility. Slate's June Thomas quotes the post-mortem by Eric Dupin in the left-leaning "Liberation." M. Dupin sees the end of "big-table politics," genuine public concern over the disreputable state of politics and politicians, and the devaluation of the presidency itself. He intoned:
"Voters take part in the electoral process because they want to affirm their membership in a political community. The weakening of this feeling leads to the collapse of democracy. A sort of civic consumerism develops where voting becomes discretionary rather than a matter of duty. ... Election Sundays have moved from the era of religious devotion to that of the shopping trip."
Americans are naturally reluctant to correlate the size of the vote with the health of the republic, but eyes are of course turned on the structural leverage of the political plebiscite. Coming up immediately in Denmark is the vote on whether to ratify the substitution of the euro for the Danish kroner. What weighs in the balance is the larger question of political centralization. Everybody who is anybody in Denmark wants full-bodied association with the European federation. But there are a lot of Danes who are not members of the establishment, and they don't think it's a very good idea to let Brussels, manipulated mostly by Berlin, decide future political questions.
Meanwhile, in Great Britain, Tony Blair has said he would live up to the promise of submitting full membership in the EU to the public at large. That means that the voters might find themselves at one and the same time voting for another term for Tony Blair and for the end of parliamentary sovereignty. The temptation would be there to reject cohabitation but exercise a preference for continued British independence, even if it means that they have to do without dear Tony.
The French always find interesting ways to say whatever it is they are trying to say, and this time is no exception.