WASHINGTON INSIGHT

STATESPEAK: Mike McCurry flunked his “screen test” several times before qualifying to become the State Department’s new spokesman. It seems that in hours of prep sessions, he was too funny and candid for the supremely solemn, circumlocutory post. But he finally got the hang of speaking roundaboutly and has been doing just fine at press briefings. . . . Unlike his predecessor, Richard Boucher--a reserved Foreign Service officer whose sense of humor was so dry as to be Saharan--McCurry has a witty, slightly wacky nature that he finds hard to contain. And unlike the George Bush Administration’s spokeswoman, Margaret Tutwiler--a schoolmarmish Alabamian who frequently scolded reporters--McCurry is a laid-back Californian who fares better than she at pronouncing the names of certain countries. Both cut their teeth on presidential campaigns--McCurry as spokesman for John Glenn in 1984, Bruce Babbitt in 1988 and Bob Kerrey in 1992. So apparently yet another secretary of state has decided that selling Americans on foreign policy has to be like a political campaign.