THE BELL CURVE:French lessons

I want the three people who called to find out if I was still living when neither my column nor one of those poster notes saying I’d be back next week was visible to know that my absence was due to a high-level public service commitment.

I was in France to observe the French presidential election and blow the whistle in this space if I spotted any hanky-panky taking place — like using their version of the Supreme Court to resolve a political issue. I felt that losing my vote in that manner in our 2000 presidential election qualified me for the French assignment, and I haven’t changed my mind, even though I suspect there may be some reluctance at the Pilot about my expenses.

Meanwhile, I can report with complete confidence that this was a clean election. If there is any lesson for us to learn, it would have to be that even boredom can’t keep French citizens from voting. Here was an election with something less than sparkling opponents who didn’t deal in any way, shape or form with homosexuality, abortion or gay marriage (the French don’t consider these political issues), yet attracted an 85% turnout of voters lured by such uncool issues as national healthcare and the length of the work week. That’s about 35% more voters than our presidential elections are attracting. And God knows how much greater the gap would be without the usual heat from the Christian right.

There are other differences. French presidential elections stand alone; there are no other contests on the ballot. Since the entire country is in the same time zone, the result is known five minutes after the polls close. I was attending a party on election night in a splendid Provencal home where there was no television — a small protest that fellow Pilot columnist Steve Smith would have admired. So at 8 p.m., a dozen of us huddled around a radio and were told the verdict. By 8:10, we were back eating, drinking and talking — mostly about matters other than politics. My group was not happy about the winner, and there were a few tears shed but they passed quickly. All very European.

Some measure of the indifference in this part of Provence was that I appeared as an expert in a story that shared headlines — if not importance — with the election. I was visiting a new museum on election day filled with a fascinating assortment of Americana mostly from the John Kennedy period. The museum is adjacent to the home where Pierre Salinger — Kennedy’s high-profile press spokesman and a former U.S. senator from California — spent the last years of his life, and it is mostly his artifacts on display.

In the midst of my visit, a bevy of reporters and photographers appeared suddenly, attracted by the theft of the flag presented to Salinger’s widow at his funeral in October 2004. Apparently nothing else was taken, so the reporters wanted to explain to their French readers, who take such matters more lightly than we do, why the flag is so important to us. As the only American on the premises, I became an instant authority, and I was quoted by name making international policy in the paper the following day.

I’m not sure what I said, and since I was quoted in French, I decided not to have it translated. I like to quit while I’m ahead.

I was touched briefly by the other big news out of Europe last week during a stopover in London long enough to accumulate some British newspapers to see how they handled the announcement by Tony Blair that he was giving up his job as prime minister. How they handled it was mostly brutal. One headline called Blair “our doomed Hamlet.” Another said, “When Blair’s not cashing in, he will crusade for peace.” A front-page columnist describing Blair’s good-bye speech wrote: “ ‘This,’ Blair gulped, getting a touch sticky and American for my taste-buds, ‘is the greatest nation in the world.’ ”

One other journalistic note. I discovered the International Herald-Tribune as a daily source for American baseball scores when traveling abroad many years ago. My gracious French hosts, Howard and Francoise Appel, long ago stopped trying to divert this insidious habit and now have a source for my addiction when I arrive. But this time I found much more than baseball. The new Herald-Tribune is fat and newsworthy and better domestic reading than a lot of urban American newspapers.

So now I’m back to homosexuality and abortion and where to build the City Hall and why we should hire more local cops to work the streets in these parts in support of federal immigration agents, and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher’s latest foray into statesmanship. I’m sorry I missed Jimmy Carter at UC Irvine, a welcome departure from all of the above. I’ve been hooked on Carter ever since I stumbled into his Sunday School class in Plains, Ga., and contemplated the other retired presidents pulling six-figure fees for speeches while Carter is hammering nails for Habitat for Humanity and teaching Sunday School for free.

And, finally, we lost Wally Schirra while I was in France. I got to know Schirra when I wrote a book about the original Mercury astronauts called “Seven Into Space” in 1960. Now there are only two.