DES MOINES, IOWA—The week's humidity finally was being wrung out of the clouds in big, steady drops on Sunday afternoon at the Iowa State Fair, and Bill Weld was telling a guy about how much he, Bill Weld, likes rain. The man was from Seattle.

"You're from Seattle? I love Seattle because I love rain. I have a lot of drizzly November in my soul," said Bill Weld, because he's Bill Weld, and, to those of us who are longtime Bill Weld watchers, we know that any casual conversation with him about anything can take a wrenching turn into, say, the opening chapter of Moby-Dick. The guy from Seattle wanted to know if Weld i a member of the ACLU.

"I used to be, but I'm going back," said Weld. "I left when Joe Rauh became president of the ACLU. Remember him. [Ed. Note: The guy from Seattle was nodding, I suspect to be polite.] He said he was going to defend the whole Constitution except the Second Amendment. Now, because of what the president* is doing, I'm going back."

There is one irrefutable fact right now about this election. For all the talk about how the Democratic candidates have to "run against" El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago, the only candidate actually doing that is William Floyd Weld, the 68th governor of the Commonwealth (God save it!) of Massachusetts. He is the only declared candidate in the Republican presidential primaries. He is, of course, polling in the petrified forest, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that, when the history of this plague-ridden political epoch is written, assuming any American will still then be capable of writing, Bill Weld is going to be remembered as a Republican who stood up and walked the walk, a Republican who was not simply Deeply Disappointed and/or Seriously Concerned at the actions of the maniac in the White House, but the only Republican who was willing to put his name on a ballot and campaign against said maniac, an incumbent president* of Weld's own party. If only for that, Bill Weld serves as a walking reproach to the entire cowardly rest of the Republican Party.

"What happened to the rest of the Republicans like me?" Weld said. "You might call them 'New England Republicans.' We're fiscally conservative. We're concerned about taxpayers' money. But, socially, we're embracing and we're welcoming. You know, I was invited to address the Republican National Convention in Houston in the early '90's. I was a sitting governor. I summarized my political philosophy as I want the government out of your pocket and out of your bedroom. For this, I was I booed at the convention, so maybe that was a sign of things to come.

Weld took a bite from a turkey leg during his visit to the Iowa State Fair. ALEX EDELMAN Getty Images

"But that is what I think, and I think there are a lot of them still out there, especially in New Hampshire, so I have high hopes for that state to launch me past Mr. Trump in an arc. And there are just a lot of people I know, old friends of mine, in the Senate in Washington, who are keeping quiet because they think it's not in their political interest to stand up just now. And I'm not rubbing their noses in it, saying, 'Louie, how can ya? Doncha remember the good old days?' because I don't ask anyone to do anything that's not in their political interests. But, as I say, if they don't stand up and be counted, they're going to be defeated."

If you are going to run against this president*, the most essential skill to have is to not give a fck, and Bill Weld always has been a master of not giving a fck. As governor, he talked freely about his love for "amber-colored liquids" and his affection for Seatrain, a 1960's electric-violin-driven rock band. He once dove into the Charles River, fully clothed, to demonstrate the efficacy of programs to clean it up. He governed according to the philosophy he stated above. He was a Republican on budget issues, but he was well ahead even of many of the mossbacked Hibernian Democrats in the state legislature on women's reproductive rights and on LGBTQ issues. (Weld signed a bill establishing domestic-partnership rights for gay couples.) Born into privilege—there are two buildings at Harvard named after his family—Weld became every Irish Catholic's favorite WASP uncle. In 1994, he was re-elected with 71 percent of the vote. He even carried Boston.

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My first encounter with him was when he was the U.S. Attorney in Boston in the early 1980s. Back then, he was cleaning out a rat's nest of corruption in the state legislature and I was covering some of the action for The Boston Phoenix. Weld was always affable and always available. (I covered one trial in which a federal judge fed Weld's prosecutor into the woodchipper and the defendant, a longtime state senate president named James Kelly, beat the rap. Weld convicted him the second time around.) On the darker side, he had a regular comedy routine going with Senate President William Bulger, whose murderous brother, Whitey, was at the time killing people and being protected by a corrupt FBI field office in Boston. Weld was a regular at Billy Bulger's St. Patrick's Day breakfast in South Boston and the two often joked about Whitey. Those jokes have become less funny over the past few years.

After that, Weld seemed to make a career of marking himself lousy with the rising conservative movement in the GOP. He quit a job as assistant attorney general under Reagan's crony, Ed Meese, and then testified against Meese in a hearing investigating the latter's corruption in office. Jesse Helms blocked Weld's appointment as ambassador to Mexico and Weld engaged in a lengthy battle to get at least a hearing on his nomination, lighting Helms on fire in the process. He simply didn't give a fck as the Republican Party moved on without him through the decades towards its inevitable nomination of Donald Trump.

"I didn't think they'd go along with everything he's done," Weld said of his fellow Republicans. "I'm not disappointed, but I am surprised." And off he went, in search of fried dough. "Staple commodity," he said, William Floyd Weld, like someone whom Vonnegut would call unstuck in time, but always in his own.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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