Phil Gramm is not a subtle man, nor is he faint of heart. He is intellectually sleek and perfectly predatory, a shark prowling sludgy waters, unable to move in any direction but the least ambiguous–and beset now by a tide of jellyfish, stinging and mocking and impeding his progress. His presidential campaign has not had a good start. Indeed, it is considered near moribund, almost a joke in Washington, where Bob Dole (and Newt Gingrich) are the current flavors of choice. It is said that Dole has addressed his electoral weaknesses-especially with the religious right–while Gramm has exacerbated his. “It has been one, constant downward spiral for Phil,” says a competitor.

There have been embarrassments. Stories have been published about Gramm investing in soft-porn movies, about his seeking parole for a felonious constituent (or maybe it was just his staff who did). There have been clumsy attempts to woo the religious wing of the Republican Party–“I’m not a preacher,” he has admitted–accompanied by a garish, voracious, gleeful fund-raising effort (particularly his now infamous comment about having the best friend you could have in American politics, “ready money”). He has clanked a bit in the early primary states; Pat Buchanan has stolen a march on the lunatic fringe (Gramm will not indulge nativist, isolationist conspiracy tendencies; he calls them “the recessive gene” of American politics). He has offended New Hampshire, playing footsy with Arizona and Delaware, each of which hoped to sneak near the front of the primary calendar. None of this is fatal or even very serious, but much of it feeds the caricature of the senator as a man of Mammon, an overambitious geek who lacks the soul to lead.

His colleagues do not mourn his ill fortune. Prominent Republicans address him, derisively, as “Mr. President.” His polls are flat-lining (and competitors whisper that his fund raising is, too). So I asked Gramm: does he feel there’s been a KICK ME sign hanging out on his campaign? “Oh, it’s no accident,” he said after a successful town meeting in Oklahoma City. “There’s an effort to knock me out because I’m the real conservative in this race. See, people are for me and against me for exactly the same reasons. They know what I stand for. I’m not gonna reinvent myself to run for president–I don’t have to do a 180 on [racial] quotas like Bob Dole, or change my views every couple of months like the president. I am who I am.”

He does, however, seem to be talking more about his mamma these days. It is part of a seamless, surprisingly effective stump speech he’s been evolving, filled with sharp one-liners and easily digestible conservative nostrums. He cares not a whit about charm. Unlike the president, he doesn’t look to embrace an audience, but to draw lines. Unlike Bob Dole, who seeks refuge in wry humor and abstractions, Phil Gramm is never coy. He peers at his audiences dimly, defiantly. His message is simple: “I believe in less government and more freedom.” He builds to a story about the death of his father, and how his mother gathered everyone around the kitchen table and said the family would now have to make do with less. He describes the new chores, the drudgery he and his brother had to take on and then says, “So we changed. We grew closer, grew stronger . . . In the real world, families and businesses make tough decisions like that every day. But our government hasn’t lived in the real world for 30 years.”

This was working quite well in America last week. It clicked with the Des Moines Chamber of Commerce. (“I’m a lot more impressed with him than I was with Dole.” said a banker named Julie Bruner. “We need someone fresh and Dole seems tired.”) It worked in Oklahoma City on the day Newt sought moose. “He looks really good to me,” said Marianne Merwick, state field director of the Christian Coalition, who added that the criticism of Gramm as an unfeeling secularist was “just a Washington thing. Let’s face it, he’s a Ph.D. in economics and he is going to talk about the things he knows best. But he lines up where I stand on most every issue. I’m going to support him.” (Quineta Wylie, the state GOP chair, said she thought Oklahoma was a Dole-Gramm race.)

There is a lesson here: the presidential election hasn’t started yet. Party activists are just beginning to tune in, decide who they like. The only meaningful numbers in NEWSWEEK’S “horse race” poll at this point are the two at the top–undecideds and Dole supporters, both of which are at their likely apogees. (Dole has the temporary benefit of being better known than his competitors.) It is entirely possible that Gramm will suffer in America as he has among “opinion leaders” in Washington, that his pinched secular minimalism will prove too austere–emotionally and philosophically–even for Republican audiences, that his non-stop fund raising will seem too crass, that he will be judged too mean. But it’s also possible that he is right, that the race will come down to him and Dole, a predator and a pragmatist, and the predator–unapologetic, unadorned and implacable–will prove too fierce to be denied.