Dear Mayor de Blasio: An open letter to our hapless presidential candidate

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It’s time to end the charade. It’s time to come clean and be honest with New Yorkers.

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Now don’t jump to conclusions. This is not a suggestion that you drop your quixotic run for the White House.

Telling you that would be pointless, like beating a dead horse. It’s clear you are extremely serious about the campaign and are committed to chasing after the presidency.

The enthusiasm you show in the debates and the doggedness you exhibit despite sparse crowds and scant support is impressive. You took on Joe Biden, and while he didn’t bother to look at you, that didn’t stop you from trying to rattle him.

Still, I can’t imagine how you keep your spirits up when you go to Iowa to speak to a handful of people. “About 15” was the estimate of a recent group.

You could meet more people than that on virtually any street corner in the city at almost any hour of the day, but you don’t talk to people here.

Are you afraid of New Yorkers, or do you just like Iowans better? You go there to diners and farms and say what great people they are, but I don’t hear you say that about us.

You rarely ride the subway, don’t take neighborhood walks or mix it up here at all. You turn your back on the cultural scene and much of the glitz and glamour that make our city special.

Meanwhile, the people of Iowa can talk to you face-to-face about anything and you listen and respond.

Here, you’re invisible, a ghost mayor.

Maybe you are following the advice of the late Joseph Campbell, who urged all of us to “follow your bliss.” Running for president is apparently your bliss, and I salute the clarity of purpose.

However, as Abraham Lincoln also told us, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” He was talking about America and slavery, but the same principle applies to individuals. No person can succeed with divided loyalties.

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The job you were hired to do — twice — and for which you are paid a handsome sum, plus free housing, is a casualty of your bliss. It’s on the back burner, if it’s on the stove at all.

Mentally and emotionally, you’ve checked out of City Hall. On your best days, you are going through the motions. It’s not good enough, and it’s not right.

Civil service workers have a term for it: retiring in place. The phrase refers to someone who doesn’t want to do the job, but doesn’t want to give it up either.

In effect, someone who wants to get paid for not working. Someone who is ripping off taxpayers.

That’s you. You should at least admit you’re cheating on us.

But it’s not just about the money. It’s about needing to give the job your complete and undivided attention.

Being mayor means being on call 24 hours a day, and your head and heart must be totally into it.

That’s what your most successful predecessors had in common. La Guardia, Koch, Giuliani, Bloomberg — they were hard workers, from early morning until late at night, and most weekends, too.

They got deep into the weeds of budget and policy issues, but they also believed in Woody Allen’s line that “80 percent of life is showing up.” And show up they did.

Tragedies and celebrations, water main breaks and the day-to-day, mind-numbing ceremonies, those mayors were there. They didn’t always like it — Bloomberg chafed at ribbon-cuttings and initially vowed he wouldn’t waste time on them.

But he soon learned that New Yorkers, for all our supposed sophistication, simply like to see the mayor doing the job. It’s superficial, but it also builds a bond.

That bond is indispensable when a crisis occurs. Then it’s too late to build one. In a crisis, the trust you already built helps steady the ship.

Mayor, the ship of New York is not steady and you have no reservoir of trust. The fatigue gripping the body politic is that people are tired of being disappointed in you. Most no longer expect you will ever be fully engaged, despite having more than two years left in your term.

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Most troubling, signs of decline are everywhere, and headlines from the last few days signal worse is yet to come.

Cops feel betrayed over the Daniel Pantaleo firing and the growing specter of public disrespect. As predicted, throwing water on them was the prelude to more lethal weapons, including bottles and gunfire.

This mayhem is happening during a spate of NYPD suicides, nine this year alone. It is, the chief of department said, “a contagion.”

Need I remind you that your wife’s Thrive program backed out of an event because Blue Lives Matter was a sponsor? That’s unforgivably disgraceful.

The last thing the city needs is for cops to retreat to the bunker and avoid enforcing the law out of fear nobody will back them up. A real mayor would sense this danger and be out there defending them, walking and talking with them, showing up at station houses and telling them how much he appreciates what they do.

That would also send a signal to the thugs that you have the cops’ backs. That’s what the good mayors did in moments like this. Not you.

While you were in New Hampshire or South Carolina, you might have noticed that your schools chancellor has gone off the rails. Between calling his critics racists and doling out fat pay hikes to favored insiders, Richard Carranza doesn’t have much time — or interest — in doing the actual job of educating students. Did he learn his work ethic from you?

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Then there is the poster child of disfunction — the Housing Authority. Despite your bravado about fixing things, The Post reports that repairs for a project in West Harlem will cost $286 million over nine years. That works out to $431,000 per apartment.

The list goes on, but you shouldn’t. Give it up, Mayor.

Resign, follow your bliss and get on with your life. Do it now, before it is too late to save New York.

‘Mis fit’ to be tied

Reader Nan Workman is no fan of Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. She calls them “misfits” and writes, “Perhaps it would be best if they quit Congress and moved to the Gaza Strip. Then maybe they would appreciate how good they have it living in this great country.”

Barred by Obama

Reader Bill Keegan goes at the same topic from a different angle. He writes, “The only people who have the right to complain about Israel’s ban of Omar and Tlaib are those who complained when President Obama would not allow Michael Ben-Ari, an elected member of Israel’s Parliament, into the United States.”

True story. Ben-Ari, a follower of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, was twice denied entry into the US, in 2009 and 2012 while a member of the Knesset. The Israeli government protested, but to no avail.