Hillary Clinton, in this story, plays the role of both victim and perpetrator. When I first met her during her husband’s 1992 campaign, I was excited about the possibility of her being a co-president. She seemed genuinely admirable, and it was possible for a 20-something reporter to admire her. Yet scandals or pseudo-scandals that the public craved dogged her and she kept her distance with me. I may have interviewed Bill Clinton more than any other reporter during his eight years in the White House, but I had zero sit-downs alone with his wife. When she was persuaded to do interviews with the president at her side, she was so careful with her words that she seemed to have no personality.

She was designed for an earlier era in politics. Back when her husband was running, Mrs. Clinton always seemed relieved when the interview was over and only then came to life — even waiting on me and cleaning up after my lunch on their campaign bus. She has been dissected, autopsied and minced for decades. It’s still a challenge for her to demonstrate emotion publicly. She is better with people who have no power: Her empathy for children, for the abused, for the damaged is palpable. She is less good at dealing with the things that really should not matter.

Even now she appears to imagine that even more people are out to get her than actually are, which is saying something. But in a way she’s right to feel the way she does. People are out to know her, in a way that she probably never imagined she would need to be known. I was definitely guilty of wanting to know more about Mrs. Clinton — her marriage, her child, her upbringing, her activist past — than about her health care policies.

Naturally, I am thinking about Hillary Clinton a lot now. I think about what I wanted to ask her then and the sorts of questions she is being asked now, as the Democratic nominee. I hate that we still want her to be likable and strong. I don’t need her to smile more; I want her to stop war from occurring, to keep children from starving and to teach the police that it is as great a tragedy when they kill a black man as when they kill a white one. I don’t care if she’s cool. But then I’m no longer in that coveted Choose or Lose demographic.

And I feel just a tiny bit sorry — not for what we did, but for what we enabled. In trying to interest young people in politics, MTV News inadvertently helped create a model for turning politics into entertainment. It makes me almost respect Hillary Clinton for not being able — or maybe for not even trying — to adapt to that culture.

We are steeped in nostalgia just now. The memes featuring the guy from “Dawson’s Creek” are hysterical. Fanny packs made the fashion runways of Kenzo and Armani. TV is retooling “Full House,” “The X-Files” and even “Beavis and Butt-Head.” But it isn’t really the 1990s people are nostalgic for. It’s what they might have led to, but didn’t.