“It’s almost like a puzzle mystery,” Priebus told me last summer. I don’t recall what we were talking about, but Priebus had a knack for homespun Wisconsin logic and, particularly, throwaway lines that would stick with me. I kept thinking of the puzzle mysteries that were playing out up and down Trump Tower, even though I showed up Friday without an appointment with Priebus and was confined to the lobby watching tourists ride up and down its now-famous escalators.

Priebus and I started talking last spring, as I was undertaking an article for this magazine about the seemingly fracturing state of the Republican Party. We kept in touch during the campaign, drank the occasional Miller High Life in his office and exchanged the sporadic email. Priebus was constantly going on TV saying he was certain Trump would win, even though he could read polls and precedents like everyone else. Still, he carried on as the chief carrier of Trump’s choppy water because that’s what a party chairman does: He smiles and spins and swallows his best-laid plans and audibles in the name of getting his nominee to the finish line. In a sense, Priebus, who squired his future wife to a local G.O.P. banquet on their first date, was the purest form of “political hack” that Trump would rail against as he bulldozed the G.O.P.

For his efforts during the campaign, Priebus gained the respect and gratitude of Trump loyalists — especially the fiercest loyalist, Donald J. Trump himself. He also won derision and ridicule. He was the subject of multiple stories in The Onion (“Reince Priebus Smiles, Shakes Head While Flipping Through Old Briefing on G.O.P.’s Plans for 2016”). His spirited TV defenses of Trump’s indefensible behavior drew him comparisons to “Baghdad Bob” (Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf), Saddam Hussein’s chief propagandist during the early months of the Iraq war, whose dubious predictions of imminent victory despite growing devastation all around made him an international laughingstock.

Long before Trump’s victory, back when it seemed like a long shot, I asked Priebus whether he would consider taking a job in a Trump administration — maybe a plum ambassadorship to somewhere. “Yes,” he said. “Wisconsin.” It was a throwaway answer to a throwaway question, which was laughably hypothetical anyway. But I never had a sense he had thought that much about a Trump administration job, besides possibly staying on as R.N.C. chairman whether or not the Donald prevailed.

For all his well-honed sheepishness, Priebus’s “just a kid from Kenosha, Wisc.” shtick belies a penchant for main stages, big-ticket rooms and high-level company. No shortage of Reince Priebus photos hang on the walls of the R.N.C.’s headquarters on Capitol Hill. He can be a little star-struck. He travels far and often to appear with candidates and party dignitaries at events where his presence is not necessarily required. Priebus was giddy when I spoke to him last spring as he prepared to attend a party for Time’s “100 most influential people” at Lincoln Center. We were on the phone, him walking through the lobby of the J.W. Marriott after a packed day of fund-raising. He sounded almost out of breath, less from exhaustion than what seemed like pure excitement. He told me how stoked he was to meet the golfer Jordan Spieth and the pro-wrestler-turned-actor the Rock. “Those are my top two,” Priebus said, especially the Rock. “I was a big pro-wrestling fan back in the day,” he added, noting his childhood admiration for Hulk Hogan and Mad Dog Vachon.