“You know, you can’t really have friends in this job,” Bob remarked a time or two, and didn’t bother spelling it out: As editorial-page editor, you can be loyal to a few principles, to the paper, the readers and the craft, plus maybe a wife and kids; stretch it any further and you’ll find you’ve got to disappoint one of them.  

And Bob McManus wasn’t the betraying kind; he was strictly old-school in that way, as in so many others.

Not a stuffed shirt, but restrained in a generation when most real newsmen hollered.

Matter-of-fact to a fault, except when enthused over some new gadget or computer or camera thing (he was an early adopter).

Or when reciting from memory the odd bit of finest-ever news writing, like the account of John Dillinger’s death I can’t seem to track down now, dammit.

The greatest sin he confessed to me (he’d quit drinking years before) was having a fondness for many politicians: “I like Chuck,” he’d say, not that it stopped him from ripping the guy a new one in print.

I worked with him for 17 years; he maybe saved my life at least once, getting the cops to come drag me from home to the ER after a week of me pretending I could just sleep out pneumonia.

He committed many fine acts of journalism; a classic editorial captured one of Gov. George Pataki’s last State of the State speeches, alternating direct quotes of the boilerplate with “blah blah blah” — perfectly capturing just how fully, deeply and insincerely the governor was mailing it in.

The job can get surreal: In election overtime 2000, for weeks we had to care very deeply about the latest on hanging chads, butterfly ballots and various hopelessly not-ready-for-prime-time Florida officials; doing our jobs while marveling that this mess might be the biggest story of our careers.

(Fittingly enough, the whole annoying thing finished up when the Supreme Court offered its decision an hour or two into the Post Christmas party, and we had to go back to the office.)

Then a few months later, the planes hit the towers; something else was the true news event of our lives, and oh, did it suck.

Sometime that first week, we dug up the editorial Bob had run back in August thundering that Washington was fundamentally ignoring al-Qaeda despite escalating attacks.

With Ground Zero still burning, he felt obliged to postpone his (second) wedding; Mary put up with it (not remotely the first nor last time), and they finally tied the knot that November.

He’d told us a year ago that he needed to put writing on hold for a while; he was starting chemo, the odds didn’t look great and what the hell, he’d had a good ride.

We traded a note or two since, checking in; on March 12 he mentioned, “I appear to be on verge of remission” and might soon be able to write again.

Didn’t work out that way; something else blew and proved inoperable. Mary texted me Friday with word he was headed to hospice, finishing: “The other day, he told me of an op-ed piece that should be written. Unfortunately, it will stay unwritten.”

He deeply loved Kate, the daughter of his first marriage, but the second time found his soulmate.

Bob was a proud veteran of the Silent Service; a sharp classic dresser; an avid reader all across his ridiculously wide range of interests; a guy who loved to craft a good line; a man who cared about the truth and despised phonies; always aware that our mission is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

Writing in the first person is just self-indulgence, he reckoned: It’s not supposed to be about you.

He regularly cautioned, “We’re in the business of making bird-cage liner,” even as he sweated every line.

They don’t make ’em like that anymore.

Mark Cunningham is The Post’s editorial-page editor.