David Paterson for mayor?

Well, not really. But the former New York governor just gave the current New York mayor a gentle leadership lesson, and Eric Adams would do well to take note.

Successful mayors bring both focus and seriousness of purpose to their theatrics and, after a year at City Hall, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Adams needs work in both departments.

For example, Paterson and Adams last weekend contributed to the debate over New York’s crisis du jour: its yet-to-crest migrant wave. But consider the sharp differences in how they did it, and in the messages they sent.

Paterson, during a Sunday radio interview, criticized protests over City Hall’s handling of migrant housing. He termed the demonstrations part of an effort to create a new charity-housing “industry” that New York can’t afford — particularly given its own homeless problems.

In essence, Paterson delivered a cushioned rebuke to City Hall’s largely scattershot migrant policies — and he was spot-on correct.

Adams, meanwhile, added to the confusion by crashing with migrants Friday night — it was, literally, a sleepover — in a Brooklyn shelter. Intended or otherwise, the gesture signaled to Washington that New York would welcome even more migrants — and this was a message likely not missed by newly arriving nomads themselves.

Adams’ stunt was theater, pure and simple. It ratified Paterson’s contention that, yes indeed, a new industry is a-building in the Big Apple. And it provided one more reason for not taking Eric Adams and his mayoralty too seriously.

People have been noticing.

A Quinnipiac University poll released last week showed the mayor’s numbers, if not tanking, then taking on water. Anxiety over crime, unsurprisingly, appears to be driving the decline — and it certainly doesn’t help that voters view the migrant crisis as, well, a crisis.

Blameworthy or not, incumbents catch grief for intractable problems — especially when those incumbents were elected on explicit promises to solve them.

The migrant issue is new, but crime and public disorder certainly aren’t. Neither is mayoral dithering: Adams’ rhetoric is strong, if maddingly imprecise, and follow-through is rare.

One day the mayor thunders against federal immigration policies (though rarely naming names), and the next he’s playing video games in that Brooklyn migrant shelter.

Last November, in a frenzy, Adams announces a muscular plan to bring the aggressive mentally ill in for involuntary treatment. It was a welcome move, but two-plus months later, the initiative hasn’t made much of a dent; the subways are just as chaotic — and potentially dangerous — as ever.

During the 2021 campaign, candidate Adams promised aggressive action against crime and related public disorder.

Fifteen months later, he’s still tough-talking, but there is no obvious sign of progress. Indeed, the mayor is playing rhetorical patty-cake with the state legislators blocking penal-code reform; he is all but silent regarding soft-on-crime district attorneys and he has yet to seriously engage Gov. Hochul on crime.

Meanwhile, open-air drug shooting galleries abound, illegal smoke shops are making a mockery of the state’s legal-weed program and the mayor’s own bean-counters just noted a 33-percent, year-on-year increase in the number of discarded hypodermic syringes found on city streets.

Clearly, the arc of progress is bending in the wrong direction. But what to do?

David Paterson is a smart guy. The mayor ought to have him over for lunch — and ask him.

Email: bob@bobmcmanus.nyc