To endorse or not to endorse Kamala?

When the billionaire publisher of the LA Times told his liberal editors they couldn't endorse anyone for president this year, they freaked. What if it was 1960 and they had to endorse Nixon?

The liberal staffers and Trump-hating editorial writers at the LA Times, like their fellow travelers at the Washington Post, have lost their minds because their owner/publisher intervened and decreed that the paper would not officially endorse a presidential candidate this year.  

Everyone on the planet knew Kamala Harris would get the plug at both papers, but not loudly endorsing her didn't matter one way or the other.

In the post-print era, newspaper endorsements for politicians are as irrelevant as Time magazine's choice of Person of the Year or the Atlantic's latest hit piece. 

For the record, as they used to say in journalism, non-endorsements are nothing new for the LA Times.

Until it became a reliable liberal paper that endorsed Obama twice, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, it had gone 32 years (1976-2008) without endorsing anyone.  

For the first half of the 20th century, though, the West Coast Times was a solidly conservative Republican paper owned by the Chandler family that might as well have been published by the Chamber of Commerce. 

In 1960, it was not afraid to fully endorse its favorite presidential candidate -- native son Richard Nixon -- and ridicule JFK.  

On Monday, November 7, 1960, the day before the election, the LA Times ran a Page 1 editorial endorsing Nixon next to a big photo of smiling Dick and Pat Nixon.  

The endorsement was signed by owner Norman Chandler. Here's what it said:  

‘Are You a Thinking American? ' (An Editorial) 

"Tuesday you will cast a ballot' for the next President of the United States. Will it be marked by you as a thinking American or as the spellbound fan of a current television personality? These are serious times. No thinking person can take his or her obligation lightly.

You are not marking your ballot for your favorite comedian, most fast-tongued orator, biggest giveaway sponsor, or best-dressed fashion model.  These are fleeting, inconsequential standards.

You are casting your vote for the man who will assume the highest office in the land. The winner will be your spokesman for the next four years.

Do you want this man to be a matinee idol, playing the role of a dictator ? Or, are you thoughtfully seeking a qualified leader?

By a man's company he is known. Seeing the bobby-sox swooners, some of the off-beat personalities in the entertainment world, the Utopian political schemers surrounding their dream boy is frightening.  

No thinking American wants this kind of company weaving a web around this nation's leader.

Your security, your peace of mind, your ideals are on the scales. Let your highest principles be expressed on Tuesday.

As a thinking American, mark your ballot for Richard Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge, the only two men who have the experience, courage, determination, and morals to lead our country. 

NORMAN CHANDLER  

***  

The LAT arguably helped Nixon carry California by a very slim 35,000 votes.

It endorsed Nixon again in 1968 and 1972, but by the 1980s, when I worked there, Norman Chandler's son Otis had steered it and its 1.1 million subscribers hard to port.

He made its journalism superior and made it a highly profitable and reliably Democrat paper. It was staffed by 1,100 mostly liberal Democrat journalists, most of whom hated Ronald Reagan -- but about one-tenth as much as the sinking paper's current salvage crew hates Trump.

I was the only openly libertarian editorial staffer I knew in the Decade of Greed. Republicans and conservatives were almost as rare or were in the closet.

Based on what I've read about the LAT's current endorsement flap, it's safe to say that since I left the paper in 1989 one of its top organizational goals has not been ideological diversity.