Put yourself in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s shoes. He could sit around and play footsie with needy legislators, all the while looking over his shoulder to see if prosecutors are gaining on him. Or he could throw himself into the excitement of the manhunt for the two murderers who escaped from an upstate maximum-security prison.

What would you do?

With inexplicable stealth, the killers pulled off the impossible, making the whole situation incomprehensible.

Compare that to the dreary doings in Albany, where the crimes are mostly boring bribes. Once you’ve seen one stuffed envelope changing hands, you’ve seen ’em all. But a daring, nighttime bust out of prison — that’s drama that Hollywood can appreciate. No wonder a beleaguered governor seized on the manhunt like a drowning man seizes a life jacket.

Suddenly, Cuomo gets to hold well-attended press conferences surrounded by uniformed law enforcement. He goes on TV sounding like a latter-day ­J. Edgar Hoover, putting the drama in personal terms.

When NBC cited the taunting note the escaped cons left for corrections officials, Cuomo said they “had a little bit of the comedian in them” before adding,“But I plan on giving them back that note.”

Bang, bang, he killed the interview. Get the gov a fedora and a shoulder holster and put a notch on his plastic tommy gun.

His pose makes about as much sense as anything these days in Albany, where life grinds on as though everything is copacetic. In fact, this was a truly historic year that featured the arrests and indictments of the top leaders of both houses.

The place is rotten to the core, and the stench is especially pungent now that serious horse-trading has begun and big deals are being cut in the back rooms. The secrecy is as old as Tammany Hall, which makes its continuation all the more disgraceful.

How the pols get away with it, or did until US Attorney Preet Bharara started crashing the party, is as mysterious as how the two homicidal cons cut their way out of the Clinton Correctional Facility without anyone noticing.

They somehow got hold of power tools, hooked up an electric wire and cut their way through metal and brick prison walls and pipes. They then traveled in a pipe that led out of the prison and, after cutting away a lock and chain on a manhole, emerged on a public street and vanished.

It all sounds too fanciful, the kind of thing nobody would believe because it couldn’t possibly be true. Where did they get the power tools? How did nobody — nobody! — hear them? And where did they go?

Unfortunately, similar doubts apply to Albany, too. Who can believe the corrupt, self-dealing stuff that happens there day after day, year after year? We’ve all seen it so long that we’ve come to accept it as normal.

Consider that a New York mega-developer and landlord, Glenwood Management, is linked to the charges against both former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and former Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos.

The company reportedly got some $700 million in tax breaks from just a single program, the 421-a incentive program, over the years, as the city annually forgives about $1 billion in taxes. Yet that sordid record has not stopped intense lobbying over the program’s renewal, as though nothing happened. How can that be true?

But it is, and apparently, we’re supposed to believe that this time, everything is on the level.

You get the point. New York is screwed no matter which way it turns out, so we might as well watch the prison manhunt. At least that’s something new and exciting.

Besides, in a strange way, it’s also more honest.

Good ‘times’ for clueless O

In the unlikely event there are any cub reporters out there looking for an example on how to bury the news in a story, they need look no further than the New York Times story on President Obama’s confession at the G-7 summit.

Not until the sixth paragraph does the Times clear its throat and get around to reporting the bombshell on fighting the Islamic State that Obama dropped at a news conference: “We don’t have, yet, a complete strategy,” he said, adding that it involves the Iraqis as well, and “the details are not yet worked out.”

Hmm, maybe they could have been worked out had Obama not publicly given the cold shoulder to the Iraqi prime minister. The Times didn’t mention that snub, which was caught on video, though it did report that the two men met later.

The significance of Obama’s confession merited front-page coverage, not being buried in the back of the book, as the Times did. For one thing, his confession puts the lie to all those recent media headlines that the White House would “review” its war strategy.

The fact that it has no strategy was painfully obvious given the way the Islamic State continued to advance in both Iraq and Syria.

Moreover, Obama’s admission defies his continued insistence that the terror army “ultimately . . . is going to be defeated.” Right, and ultimately, we’ll all be dead.

Time and territory lost are not easily recovered, yet the president shows no sign of changing his meandering approach. As he worried aloud about the Islamic State replenishing its losses with even more foreign recruits, he said of the cutthroats, “They’re nimble and they’re aggressive and they’re opportunistic.”

Notice he didn’t say that about our side.

Bratton is facing quite the de-lemma

Some retired cops aren’t buying Commissioner Bill Bratton’s soft-pedaling of the 20 percent increase in murder. One writes, “Bratton’s got a problem all his making in that he took this position knowing full well what this mayor is and isn’t. Bratton lives in Ray Kelly’s shadow, and now he can’t get out without surrendering his reputation.”

Another police family member sees Bratton’s position similarly, but with more sympathy. “If he all too obviously butts heads with the mayor, isn’t it probable he’ll be eased out or unceremoniously dumped? Then what? Who is likely to be chosen to replace him? No doubt some hack willing to cut every cop off at the knees in return for the job.

“Mr. Bratton understands that and has character enough to try and preserve his own position in order to preserve the department as well, even at the price of his self -respect.”

Either way, buckle up. The worst is yet to come.

U kidding on gender?

As the world turns.

Barnard College for women will now accept applications from people who “live and consistently identify as women,” no matter their gender at birth.

But transgender men, meaning they were born female, need not apply, The Wall Street Journal reports. Nor should those who don’t identify “as male or female.”

Those who start school as females, but switch to males, can stay at Barnard.

Any questions, ask the nurse.