Bill Weld's weird Tuesday: the controversial V.P. pick was enigmatic to the end.

• Author: Welch, Matt

TWO DAYS BEFORE the election, and just minutes before a Gary Johnson rally at Colorado Christian University, I asked the Libertarian Party's 2012 vice presidential nominee, Judge Jim Gray, what he thought went especially well with the party's historically successful yet emotionally disappointing run at the White House this year. The answer surprised me.

"I really believe that Bill Weld was a really great addition to the campaign," volunteered the anti-drug war Orange County jurist, who had been hoping to repeat as veep nominee until the better-known ex-governor of Massachusetts became available. "I didn't get any national media, particularly, on my own in the 2012 campaign. Tried it, didn't work. When Gov. Johnson and Gov. Weld decided to do this, I think he was on [television] like 25 times before the convention.... What's the use of having the best message if nobody hears it?"

Sure, I countered, but what about Weld's appearance five days earlier on MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, in which the candidate said, after a campaign full of similar hints, that he was "here vouching for Mrs. Clinton"?

"I would prefer not to say anything about that," Gray replied.

William Weld has been provoking schizophrenic responses from Libertarians since at least 2006, when the Boston Brahmin decided to run for governor of New York on both the Libertarian and Republican tickets. (The Empire State has unusual ballot laws.) When seeking the L.P. nomination back then, Weld vowed that he would continue to run under that banner even if the GOP declined to select him. When Republicans indeed chose a different path, Weld reneged on his promise. ("That was a semi-disastrous race," he sort-of-explained to me at the Libertarian National Convention in Orlando this past May. "I crashed and burned as a carpetbagger.")

The New York debacle was only one of several objections raised to Weld's candidacy at the Convention. His conversion to the party came less than three months after he had endorsed John Kasich for president. (Not only did the hand-flapping Ohio governor propose serial military interventions during his ill-fated run, but Libertarians loathe him for his role in denying the party ballot access in his home state. Johnson had to run as an independent there.) Weld has in various iterations been a drug warrior and a gun controller, and he gives off the distinct whiff of a man who is in it chiefly for himself.

And yet outside the Orlando convention hall, and...