A little over two centuries ago, a small group of planters, landowners, merchants, and lawyers met in Philadelphia to decide how their new country was to be run. Within four months this remarkable collection of patriots, veterans, pragmatists, geniuses, oddballs, and the inspired succeeded in agreeing the extraordinary, beautiful document that, even with its flaws, was to form the basis of the most successful nation in history.On February 28, 2002, another constitutional convention began its work, in Brussels this time, not Philadelphia. Its task was to draw up a constitution for the European Union. The gathering in Brussels was chaired by Giscard D'Estaing, no Hamilton or Madison, but a failed, one-term president of France best known for his unseemly involvement with Jean-Bedel Bokassa, the cannibal "emperor" of central Africa. Giscard's convention was packed with placemen, cronies, creeps, and has-beens to make up a body where to be called second rate would have been an act of grotesque flattery. Only a fool, a braggart, or a madman would have compared this rabble with the gathering in Philadelphia. Needless to say, Giscard managed to do just that. The rabble returned the compliment. At ceremonies held to celebrate the conclusion of the convention's work, one over-excited Austrian delegate compared Giscard to Socrates, a remark that would undoubtedly have reduced that ancient, and unfortunate, Greek to yet another swig of hemlock.
