[Andrew]
The Makefile.pre.in is probably from Misc/Makefile.pre.in, which has a reference to $(CCC); Modules/Makefile.pre.in is more up to date and uses $(CXX). Modules/makesetup also refers to $(CCC), and probably needs to be changed to use $(CXX), matching Modules/Makefile.pre.in.
This is a bug in the install script then - it installs the CCC version into /usr/local/lib/python2.0/config. Also, the online extending-and-embedding instructions explicitly tell you to use the Misc/ version (http://www.python.org/doc/current/ext/building-on-unix.html)
Given that we want to encourage the use of the Distutils, Misc/Makefile.pre.in should be deleted to avoid having people use it.
That may be a little drastic :-) So, as far as I can tell, we have a problem in that using the most widely available instructions, attempting to build a new C++ extension module on Linux will fail. Can someone confirm it is indeed a bug that I should file? (Or maybe a patch I should submit?) Mark.