One of the aspects of a presidential election that I do not miss is having to go through the editorial endorsement process for the candidates who are lined up in spots along a lengthy ballot.

I went through that process seemingly every year for nearly four decades. We’d do it every even-numbered year for legislative and congressional races. We would do the same thing every four years when the time arrived for us to decide on whom to endorse for president.

I worked for editors and publishers who would shy away from the word “endorse.” They preferred to call it a “recommendation.” Yeah, I get it. Newspapers hardly ever are able to swing the tide of an audience that has its mind made up. So, I guess we did only offer our “recommendation” for readers to consider.

But we would go through the motions of considering which of the candidates were the better choice.

The 1980 presidential election presented us at our newspaper in Oregon with a dilemma. My staff and I weren’t nuts about President Carter or former California Gov. Ronald Reagan. So, I drafted an editorial recommending independent candidate John Anderson, the congressman from Illinois. I presented it to the publisher who, without even blinking, handed it back to me and said, “We’re going to back Reagan.”

The rest is history.

Newspaper editorials no longer have the clout they once enjoyed. Readers depend on newspapers’ guidance less today than ever.  They rely on myriad sources.

Then again, did we really have the impact we sought? Ohhhh … probably not.