Governing is hard. Certain amounts of deal making, arm twisting, and legalistic workarounds are part of democratic governance even at the national level. Just look at Washington.

Still, Europe's push from above to further consolidate governance has often conflicted with popular sentiment. British Conservative Member of European Parliament Daniel Hannan sneers that, "Brussels has a bizarre power to make politicians break their words, split their parties and betray their voters so as to keep the project going." George Washington University political scientist Henry Farrell puts it more soberly: "European politicians have preferred to integrate by stealth rather than public debate."

Farrell argues that they have tried to "treat the rolling crisis as another, albeit much more complicated, technocratic problem, which can be solved through the usual kind of technocratic solution."

Thus far, they have largely succeeded. Germany has demanded austerity measures as the price of continuing to prop up the euro, but this has been wildly unpopular across the Continent. Going along with the measures is likely to cost Spain's Jose Zapatero and his Socialist party their jobs just as it already has the governments that passed austerity programs in Ireland and Portugal. A majority in Ireland continue to oppose austerity measures even though the economy is rebounding nicely and Sinn Fein, the only anti-austerity party, is surging in the polls. Eight of ten Greeks opposed Papandreou's plans to address the crisis by going along with EU demands. Ditto 81 percent of Portuguese on their austerity measures.

As Heather Horn observed, the short-lived threat of a Greek referendum was a signal that "national sovereignty is alive" despite the grand project for a single Europe. As much as the Germans and French resent having to bail out Greece, the Greeks may resent having their core political decisions dictated from Paris and Berlin even more.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi recently sniffed that, "No one in the EU can appoint themselves commissioner and speak on behalf of elected governments and peoples of Europe. Nobody is able to give lessons to their partners." But the reality is that France and especially Germany wield an enormous amount of leverage over eurozone states in trouble and have not shied from using it.

Indeed, there is considerable worry in London right now over who will lead Europe. The UK, having chosen to retain the sovereign flexibility of retaining its own currency and thus remaining outside the Eurozone -- a move that seems brilliant at the moment -- risks being left outside the decision making circles in Brussels as more power shifts to the European Central Bank and the European Financial Stability Facility and away from the continent's more democratic institutions.