The toughest job in politics these days is defending Hillary Clinton, mocked brilliantly by The Post as the “Deleter of the Free World.”

Her beleaguered defenders, as they retreat behind the bunker door, are settling on a crude ­legal defense.

Their mumbo jumbo chorus ­begins with the claim that she didn’t break any laws by doing government business on her private e-mail and ends with the insistence that everybody does it.

That’s their story, and they are sticking to it — until they are forced to find another one.

That will be soon because, while Hillary’s Helpers may have a point about fuzzy laws, their argument is ultimately futile. She’s not on trial and opponents don’t have to meet a persnickety legal standard to win their case.

She’s running for president — and she must meet a less precise but more difficult standard. It’s the test of integrity, and she’s failed it often during her 30 years in public life.

As the e-mail debacle proves, the leopard hasn’t changed her spots.

The test requires “obedience to the unenforceable,” a phrase my friend Daniel Rose suggests amounts to “doing the right thing.” Rose, a New York builder and philanthropist, uses the phrase in a collection of essays and speeches he has published.

Coined by an English judge nearly a century ago, the phrase was summarized by the late educator John Silber as the “domain” that exists between law and free choice.

“It may include moral duty, social responsibility and proper behavior,” all reflected by the idea of “manners,” he wrote.

Nobody can force you to obey manners — you should do it without being forced. But proper behavior and the Clintons are oil and water. These are the people who tried to steal furniture from the White House!

To them, the concept of “obedience to the unenforceable” must seem as alien as little green men from Mars. They recognize no constraint on themselves other than the outer limits of what’s legal, and sometimes not even that.

They have spent a lifetime parsing words, splitting hairs and cutting corners in pursuit of power. In their world, any behavior not ­indictable is acceptable.

Their success has come at a cost to the country. Their ability to walk away from multiple collisions with the law, ranging from her suspect profits on cattle futures to his impeachment case, had a corrosive impact on public morals.

Like a political Bonnie and Clyde, their notoriety spawned a generation of pols who aspire to be just like them. Their business is booming, and just about everybody really does do it now.

From town halls to state houses to Washington, American government is growing in size, complexity and corruption. A seeming paradox, though really no surprise, is that the bigger government gets, the less people actually trust it.

Marking new record lows, only 11 percent of Americans now have confidence in the executive branch and only 5 percent in Congress, according to the General Social Survey conducted by the University of Chicago.

It finds that, by contrast, half of the nation has a great deal of confidence in our military.

Something’s going on here and the Clintons personify the cultural rot. Despite the string of seedy revelations, she’s still her party’s front-runner and her quest ­remains on course.

But if — or, rather, when — other scandals pop up, her helpers ought to recalibrate their strategy.

My modest proposal is this: Stop the ridiculous game of denying her obvious character defects and embrace them as a perfect match for the corrupt era she helped to shape.

Instead of trying to persuade voters that Hillary’s honest, Team Clinton should sell her as a president who will meet the public’s low expectations.

Vote for me, she could say, because you already know you can’t trust me.

Andy’s shot at school reform

The ruling by a state judge on Staten Island that a lawsuit against school-tenure provisions can go to trial is a huge leap forward for parents and children.

It also gives Gov. Cuomo a chance to hurry reforms he vows to make.

In arguing that bad teachers with jobs for life deprive students of their right to a quality education, two separate suits combined into one name the state and city as defendants.

The ruling, then, puts Cuomo in the odd position of having to defend at trial laws and rules he calls destructive.

He wants the Legislature, for example, to make it easier to fire bad teachers by linking evaluations more tightly to student performance.

He wants teachers to be eligible for tenure after five years, instead of three.

That’s consistent with what the plaintiffs want. Campbell Brown, who brought one of the suits, says the aim is to get better teachers, period.

“We know that quality teaching is the most important factor influencing student achievement,” she said, predicting that the case will show that “New York’s antiquated education policies have robbed students across the state of the opportunity to succeed.”

In his ruling, Judge Philip Minardo greenlighted the approach, writing that he would not “close the courthouse door to parents and children with viable constitutional claims.”

The unions joined the suit as defendants and Mayor de Blasio is their puppet, but Cuomo has pledged to break up the union “monopoly.”

He has everything to gain by telling his lawyer, the state Attorney General’s Office, that he agrees with the plaintiffs and wants to settle.

The switch would be far from unique. The mayor did something similar by dropping a city position he inherited and settling with plaintiffs over stop-and-frisk.

And the federal government stopped supporting the Defense of Marriage Act when President Obama backed gay marriage.

Gotham life imitates art

Rikers Island is exploding with drugs and violence, armies of the homeless live in shelters described as “Dickensian,” shootings and murder are up and schools are down.

Crater-sized potholes and months’ worth of litter and trash mar city streets.

Reader Dick Reif sees it all and offers his favorite movie of Gotham’s bad old days: “Death Wish.”

“It’s the best film portrait of an out-of-control NYC during the 1970s,” he writes. “The Charles Bronson thriller reflects New Yorkers’ fear and frustration during the limp leadership of a clueless mayor.”

The ‘case’ vs. Menendez

With each passing day, it gets harder to see the reports of pending criminal charges against Sen. Robert Menendez as anything other than a political hit job.

It’s now been 10 days since every major news organization reported that anonymous sources in the Justice Department said the New Jersey Democrat would be charged with corruption, yet no charges have been filed.

The time lag adds to the suspicion that the rumors aimed to punish Menendez for opposing President Obama’s feckless Iran policy and to scare off senators who might join him.

If there is a criminal case against Menendez, let’s see it now. If there isn’t, then Barack Obama really is Richard Nixon.