Reporter's Notebook: I've Covered Clinton for 2 Years and Still Don't Know Who the 'Real Hillary' Is

I started covering Hillary Clinton in the spring of 2014, a year before she announced her candidacy, when she was releasing her latest memoir, “Hard Choices,” and still doing paid speeches.

Since then, I’ve traveled to more than 35 states with her, attended hundreds of her campaign rallies, big and small, and watched her interact with thousands of voters; some who liked her, some who didn’t.

I’ve watched her win. And I’ve watched her lose.

During this time, the number one question I’ve been asked from people who know I cover Clinton is: What is she like?

“Is she nice?” a family member asked me at my sister’s wedding last year.

“Is she really a liar?” a young woman questioned during a panel I participated in a few months back.

My short answer has been and remains the same: It’s complicated.

People in Clinton’s inner circle often say that the former first lady, senator and secretary of state is the most famous, least known person; that if people only knew the “real Hillary” they would like her.

They describe her as fun, witty and generous, with the best sense of humor.

This is not the way many voters have described her to me. I’ve been told she’s “sneaky,” “shady,” “not very likable,” and this is from people who said they were going to vote for her, in part because they couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Donald Trump.

“It’s a race between bad and worse,” a voter once told me.

Over the course of this campaign, as I followed Clinton around the country, I’ve tried to figure her out on my own. But, as I’ve learned, it’s not an easy task. She’s complex, to say the least, and her tense relationship with the press didn’t help.

I’ll always remember the time she shut me down when I tried to ask her a question during a news conference a few months into her campaign.

“Nick gets to choose who asks the questions,” she snipped with a snide smile, referring to her traveling press secretary, Nick Merrill, who up until the very end of her campaign still hand-selected the reporters who got to ask questions during press avails.

Merrill didn’t end up calling on me that day, I didn’t get to ask a question, and I left embarrassed that Clinton had singled me out.

It wasn’t until six months after she launched her campaign – in October 2015 -- that I actually met Clinton for the first time. She had drinks with a small group of reporters at a bar in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

That night she was engaging and personable in a way I had never seen before. Many of us walked away talking about how she should be showing more of that side of herself on the campaign trail.

The reality, though, is that she tried. She went on “Saturday Night Live” as “Val the Bartender," chomped on a pork chop at the Iowa State Fair and drank pints of Guinness on St. Patrick's Day.

Even the way she launched her campaign – a road trip, a stop at Chipotle, small roundtables where she would talk one-on-one with voters – was all geared toward making Clinton seem relatable.

In many ways though, such moments didn’t show the “real Hillary” at all, rather they showed her trying to be the candidate she thought she should be.

But there were times when Clinton’s personality came through.

During a visit to an ice cream shop in Manhattan during the New York primary, she jokingly booed at a reporter who asked her how many calories were in the ice cream sundae that she was eating. In California, when two young men took their shirts off in front of her during her remarks, she called it a “little distracting” but joked that as long as they didn’t take anything else off, they could stay.

It was also fascinating to watch Clinton work the rope line at campaign events. In between selfies, she would strike up conversations with voters, and often ask her campaign to get their contact info so they could follow up.

While I still can’t say I know Hillary Clinton, I certainly know things about her.

I know that she wears a bracelet with a charm of her granddaughter Charlotte on it every single day. She always carries Halls throat lozenges in her pocket, and there’s always a few hidden under her podium. She really does eat hot sauce on the trail. She’s fiercely loyal to her friends. She’s unbelievably guarded.

Clinton struggled with showing her “real” self even through the final weeks of the campaign.

“I know you may still have questions for me. I respect that, I want to answer them,” she told a crowd in Cleveland last month.

That message never fully resonated and, ironically, Clinton’s most vulnerable and real moment wasn’t until the very end, just hours after Donald Trump became president-elect.

In what could likely be her final bow on the political stage, Clinton, surrounded by her family and running mate, delivered a graceful, raw and emotional concession speech, which, for the first time in this race, seemed to give America a glimpse into who the "real Hillary" is.