Clinton, on the other hand, proceeds with immense caution. When we first spoke last July, she agreed to our meeting on the maddening proposition that we do it off the record. I went along, reluctantly, as it was my only entree (she agreed later to put parts of it on the record). Her hesitancy to give interviews and allow media access has barely subsided over time. When I asked Robby Mook, Clinton’s 36-year-old campaign manager, how his candidate had adapted to the insane rules of engagement that this campaign has “normalized” (to use a 2016 buzzword), he essentially said that she hadn’t. “Hillary approaches this campaign through the portal of wanting to fix problems,” Mook told me. “And so politics for her is, first and foremost, not an exercise in communicating to the masses. It’s about finding the right solution and then going after it.”

Clinton is, in other words, the anti-Trump. She is not a political novelty, nor is she especially entertaining as a media personality or in front of big groups. She and her campaign know this and have been smart about not pretending otherwise. Trump’s big shadow and outrage machine have even allowed her to become slightly and perhaps blissfully lost; to fade, if not into obscurity, at least into a background that cuts the glare of the scrutiny to which she has been so averse. In a sense, she is daring voters to study her positions, listen to her answers and not look to her for entertainment or emotional impact. In 2016, that can seem almost risky…

Clinton envisions a model more suited to her skills and comforts. It also could portend a very different style of president — without the sweeping themes of Barack Obama, the moral certainty of George W. Bush or the explanatory clarity of Bill Clinton. Can Hillary Clinton do a better job inspiring people from the White House than she has from the campaign stage? Would it become easier or harder to do without Trump around to embody everything she has ever opposed and scare the daylights out of her base? “Don’t blow this” is what Clinton hears most often these days, she told me, or variations thereof. As it has turned out, Clinton, who began her campaign intent on breaking the last barrier — the glass ceiling — has found her most compelling rationale in her own role as a barrier, a bulwark against the impossible alternative. As I was leaving our interview, she smiled, looked me in the eyes and left me with a casual reminder. “As I’ve told people,” she said, “I’m the last thing standing between you and the apocalypse.”