Please don't tell me your dreams. I don't mean your hopes and aspirations — those kinds of dreams are fine, even inspiring. Just don't bore me with the retelling of what went on in your head as you slept last night, OK?

That said, I will now excuse myself to tell you that last night, as I write this, I dreamed about Andrew Cuomo. The governor and I were hanging out on a bench at a street corner, talking about our lives and random thoughts — you know, an easy conversation that a couple of guys might have. We were a little younger. I even asked him who he was dating these days.

Go ahead and make fun of me now, and remind me that Dr. Freud said that dreams are manifestations of our wishes and anxieties. Deep in my subconscious, you may ask, do I really want to get down with The Gov?

In fact, I do want to have a chat with the governor. All of us on the Times Union editorial board hope to do so. On Aug. 3, we asked his staff if he would meet with us, which candidates routinely do when newspapers are weighing endorsements. But so far, less than two weeks before the Democratic primary, we haven't had any luck (though we have interviewed his opponent, Cynthia Nixon, and the four attorney general candidates). Maybe next week.

Not that I blame politicians for dreading an encounter with journalists. Why would they want to voluntarily open themselves to tough questioning? It's easier in the digital era to bypass us and reach voters with just the message they want, or to follow the model of our current president, whose favorite approach to reporters seems to be inciting fans at rallies to heckle and harass them.

Citizens benefit, though, when public officials make themselves available for regular questioning. Politicians ought to explain their actions and opinions to voters, and journalists help make sure those explanations aren't just self-serving accounts focusing only on the good news that politicians brag about, or the awful alternatives they warn about to get elected.

Long before Donald Trump labeled the media "the enemy of the people," and claimed any story that doesn't glorify him is "fake news," the tug-and-push between journalists and the politicians they cover was a fraught relationship. You can't really be friends, even if you share the same interests and your kids go to the same school. Nor is it appropriate to see each other only as antagonists. We share the goal of serving the public.

But what is important for a politician — winning office, and getting credit for doing good work for constituents — isn't an objective that makes a difference to a journalist, whose job is truth-telling, even when it makes politicians (and their partisans) uncomfortable or angry.

Yet even in an era when boosterish dispatches can be digitally directed to targeted voters, journalism still significantly shapes a politician's image. Nor is the relationship one-sided: Journalists need the insight of those who work inside government and politics. Access to decision-makers always improves storytelling.

It was more easy-going a generation ago. When Mario Cuomo was governor, reporters routinely traveled with him on a rumbling twin-engine turboprop to his public appearances, offering a lot of time for conversation. Today's reporters likely would consider ethically inappropriate a custom of that era: On a flight to an event in Buffalo, say, the governor would talk on the record; on the late-night return, when the governor had a glass of vodka in hand, notebooks were closed. (Not that a reporter considers any politician's words to ever be truly unguarded.)

The Cuomo currently in the governorship has been changed by the times, too. Conversations with journalists were routine and warm when he was in President Clinton's Cabinet in the 1990s and when he was state attorney general, and even when he first became governor, he would pick up the phone regularly. But events make politicians leery of being caught saying the wrong thing. Questions get tougher as a record in office gets longer.

Those of us involved in the editorial endorsement process don't harbor an inflated sense of our importance these days. Yes, an editorial may help elevate a candidate in a crowded field — some say Zephyr Teachout has surged in the attorney general race since she got the nod of that big broadsheet downstate — but most voters make their choices based on a range of factors. We think editorials can help readers, since our jobs give us more access to candidates and information about them than most citizens can get on their own.

It's harder when politicians try to freeze us out, but we do have other ways of getting the information we need. We just hope public servants see accessibility as part of their responsibility.

You know, a guy can dream.