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Strauss understands the realities of special-interest politics, the medley of well-financed voices that have replaced the handful of powerful men who once ran Congress. As a former associate puts it, "People like at the same time." Strauss' constant jibes convey the fact that he can be either a sympathetic mediator or a ruthless opponent. Most Texas politicians sheath their hubris in faded denim, giving the impression of approachability, even humility, while the internal computer madly figures the advantages. Extraordinary structural components, embodied in a 63-year-old man of unextraordinary appearance, enable Strauss to do what he does so well. " It is all part of a concert that plays in the best halls of influence. Structuring is part of the Strauss approach to political and financial propositions, a realistic assessment of needs and possible trade-offs mixed with a little deprecation. I'm going to structure a little bit with you, so you can get what you want done and keep me from looking like the kind of guy who would take the magazine and try to launch a presidential thing." Then if we go back and decide to put it in, we'll put it in. Strauss tells the reporter, when he arrives, "Let's take the presidential factor out of it. His gorilla joke ("Running the Democratic National Committee is like making love to a 400-pound gorilla: You don't stop when you want to - you stop when the gorilla wants to.") has been adapted by Strauss' observers, friends and associates to fit an infinite variety of jobs. Strauss has been written about so often that the few people who do not know him think they do. The disarming grin and languorous eyelids, the bald pate with silvery side locks, the $400 suits, the Watergate apartment where heavy beefsteak sometimes broils over coals on the terrace, the favorite sobriquet "sonabitch," the bits of paper chewed during interviews and then rolled into little balls, the perennial good humor, the candid assessment - scatological, endearingly cynical - all of it has entered the collective unconscious of the fourth estate. What do you think, Bob? It would be a fitting epitaph for the transplanted East Texas Tiresias who explains the political action to Bic-poised commentators. "All the press calls in," he says later, "The New York Times, the Newsweek and Time bureaus.

He has even been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate. Strauss is the ultimate Washington troika - lawyer, politician, lobbyist.

Reagan called and wanted time, and I wouldn't give him any. His telephone manner, the verbal equivalent of elbow-fondling, is reassuring, and a shade conspiratorial: "You won't have to share me with anybody. Robert Strauss is using his favorite medium, the telephone, to communicate with his favorite constituency, the press. Every sonabitch in the world has been calling, from Howard Baker to the minority leader.