The Decline and Fall of William Weld

Word has now reached the Chimes at Midnight, that Former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld, improbably a candidate for the New York GOP gubernatorial nomination has thrown in the towel leaving an open field for movement conservative John Faso.
Alas, where is the Bill Weld of 1990?
You can hear Scot Lehigh sighing from the top of Robbins' Hill in Menotomy.
What happened to that red headed galahad who fought glum movement conservative Steve Pierce to the last ballot and prevailed?
All that was one wife ago, and a lot of whiskey has surged under the bridge since then...poor Bill just couldn't stand the pace anymore. Its a little sad but also inevitable.
In his day, Bill Weld was nothing sort of amazing. Long before Dick Morris or Bill Clinton he perfected the art of triangulation and alternately sneered at or compromised with a legislature dominated by democrats. Soccer moms and viritually the entire local punditariat swooned at his feet.
He cut taxes, ignored the poor and lame, listened to almost every lame brained poll tested idea in christendom, lied about cost over-runs on the Big Dig and cut out of the office before 4pm almost every day.
And what the hell, people loved him for it...for a while anyway.
To me, he created the viceregal governing style and brought an insolence to the corner office that still conditions the governorship some sixteen years later.
Ah but the Lehighs and Barnicle's all loved him...he catered to their darkest desire to meet the problems of the hour with a flippant adolescent smirk.
He was re-elected easily and then it all went to smash in his 1996 race against John Kerry...Weld forgot that you can campaign and govern like a neighborhood happy drunk but the US Senate is still held to be a serious place by the Massachusetts electorate.
And then, fatally he got bored.
Sheer ennui led Weld to a quixotic and doomed fight for the Ambassadorship to Mexico. The very wowsers he'd dissed in 1990 rose up in the vengeful bloated form of Senator Jesse Helms to send Bill reeling back to the minors.
It was in retrospect, a cringeworthy performance.
In the meantime Weld had resigned as governor thus setting in motion the relentless trivialization of that office that plagues us to this day.

The problem with Bill Weld was, he claimed his ruling passion was "a horror of boredom"...that is an immensely honest and selfish admission from a supposed public servant. Others want social justice, a respect for the law, a revolution or some other dubious eschaton...all Bill Weld ever asked of his constituents is that they not bore him.
In the end, Massachusetts could not deliver..and so Bill wandered off to the Upper West Side of Manhattan where he wrote novels or tested the seals on his famed hollow leg. And then, driven by demons one cannot begin to describe, Bill attempted one last doomed non-rendezvous with destiny.
Sad.
But at least the GOP and New York State are spared the spectacle of just how wrong and embarrassing things get when Bill Weld gets bored.