Bob McManus

Bob McManus

Opinion

Makes no sense not to vote for Joe Lhota

Vote for Joe Lhota.

Not because he has a ghost of a chance to become mayor of New York City. Barring an appearance by the Four Horse­persons of the Apocalypse, he certainly doesn’t.

Not because he’s an uncomplicated, decent guy who is more than up to the challenges presented by one of the most difficult jobs in America — although he certainly is, on both counts.

And not simply because he isn’t Bill de Blasio — though that is sufficient reason, and more about that below.

Rather, vote for Joe Lhota because it makes no sense not to.

Lhota is the candidate who promises to keep things pretty much the way they are — and, for all the bluster to the contrary, you know that’s not so bad.

Yes, the polls show de Blasio with landslide leads over Lhota — accurate numbers, no doubt, even if the margins make little objective sense, since the same polls also show Mayor Bloomberg with a 60 percent approval rating after three terms in City Hall.

That’s extraordinary in its own right, and hardly evidence of the widespread unhappiness that drives gaps like those separating de Blasio and Lhota.

And Bloomberg’s approval figures are understandable: Violent crime is at all-time lows; the schools are showing progress; the municipal economy is chugging along and rare indeed is the media-applauded whim the mayor hasn’t indulged (hello, bike lanes!).

So, from the average voter’s perspective, what’s not to like?

Especially since the self-anointed candidate of change, de Blasio, says that his agenda will proceed at the expense of successful existing policies.

Though not in so many words, of course.

De Blasio speaks fluent dog whistle. He talks tough on crime, for example, but not without making it clear that the aggressive policing policies that did so much to pacify the city, bolstering both its economy and its quality of life, will go by the boards when his pick for police commissioner takes over.

He’s also clear that the teachers’ union will have the tiller hand when it comes to school reform — which is to say: Good-bye, school reform.

And that resentment-driven tax policies will be the order of the day, regardless of the impact on a city economy that is dramatically outperforming the state’s — and has paced the nation’s — for some time now. (He clearly confuses wealth consumption with wealth creation, or hopes the voters will.)

And that flights of fancy, rather than harsh reality, will inform his health-care policies. (Case in point, his feckless defense of the failed Long Island College Hospital, now on court-ordered life support via a Brooklyn machine judge despite having virtually no patients, nor long-term prospects for any.)

And yet Lhota’s polling deficits persist.

Certainly his desultory campaign hasn’t helped. And the political math isn’t hard to master: He’s a Republican in a city where Democrats dominate, 6-1.

For the most part, though, it seems that de Blasio’s advantage resides in the distractions of the city’s bizarre primary season — Carlos Danger, indeed — which allowed him to run a fundamentally detail-free campaign.

Meaning that nobody really knows much about him.

This much is clear, however: De Blasio thinks that the rules don’t apply to him.

Not on a policy level: He promises to take dedicated Sandy relief money from the feds and divert it to pet political projects. This will help next Tuesday, but it likely will have repercussions the next time New York rattles a cardboard cup at Congress.

And certainly not on a personal basis: As The Post’s Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein have reported, de Blasio has ignored city reporting rules on a $1.1 million rental property he owns in Brooklyn, while declining to divulge income from that building on his mandatory municipal-financial-disclosure forms.

Arrogance of this sort, on top of everything else, doesn’t need the encouragement of a 40-point electoral mandate — especially since a cornerstone of the de Blasio campaign is a pledge to dismantle command accountability in the NYPD.

That alone is enough to justify a vote for Joe Lhota next Tuesday.

So cast one. Soon your conscience will thank you.

rmcmanus8@gmail.com