Donald Trump introducing his wife, Melania, on the first day of the Republican National Convention. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

And there it is, Donald. You’re finally legit.

I don’t mean just in the political sense. I’m talking about the kid from Queens, the one your son Donald Jr. described in his speech, who elbowed his way into Manhattan with his dad’s money and plastered his name on the sides of skyscrapers and airplanes, until literally it couldn’t be missed, and still the East Side philanthropists and pompous bankers didn’t give you your due.

(Manhattan, it should be noted, was the only county in New York state that didn’t vote for you.)

A guy like Bloomberg, from some triple-decker neighborhood outside Boston — him they treated like a regular Bruce Wayne. But not Trump. They sold you tickets to their benefits, even as they sneered at the architectural excess and the gambling business and the gossip columns.

Those liberal socialites will forgive insincerity and failure every day of the week, but coarseness is another story.

You willed yourself into celebrity, dominated reality TV, doled out checks to the political establishments of both parties — not because you were playing the influence game, as you like to say now, but because you wanted into the club. You wanted to be taken seriously as an intellect and a businessman.

Well, now you have it. You’re the nominee of the Republican Party, a few turns of fate from occupying the most legit office ever devised by human beings. And tonight’s your moment to prove you belong.

The party’s leaders and operatives, these guys who called you “the Donald” with mock respect for all those years, as if anyone could miss the subtle dismissiveness in likening you to a mobster, are telling you that it’s time to seem legit, too. They want you riveted to that teleprompter, hell-bent on projecting a kind of Reaganesque sobriety.

No more asides about polls and penis size. This is your last chance to pivot toward the kind of statesmanlike bearing we demand in a president.

But you’ve never listened to them before, Donald, and if I were you I don’t think I’d start now. The time for pivoting is long past. And as the hoary sportscasters like to say, you dance with the one that brung you.

Story continues

There was probably a window of a few months, between when you locked down the nomination and this week’s convention, in which you could have re-spawned. Had you not attacked the integrity of a judge simply for being Latino, had you responded to tragedies in Orlando and Dallas with uplifting words about healing and reform, by now everyone might have forgotten the stuff about disparaging prisoners of war and the innuendos about menstrual cycles.

But I’m guessing that window closed a few weeks ago, and one speech isn’t going to pry it back open. It’ll just look like you’re trying on someone else’s clothes.

And truth be told, you can’t really pull off statesmanship anyway. That was clear Tuesday night, when they beamed you into the convention from Trump Tower, with that American flag over your shoulder and the teleprompter feeding you pablum at a measured pace. It felt a little like a hostage video or, worse, like some Orwellian communiqué from the dear leader.

You’re a reality TV star, Donald, not a born movie actor like Reagan. As a rule, if you’re not flailing your arms uncontrollably in that short-armed, T. rex style that every kid in America can now mimic, no one’s really going to believe anything you’re saying.

But here’s the main reason I’d resist any advice to go all Mitt Romney on the national audience tonight. You’ve already made your choice about how you’re going to run and maybe even win this race, and it has nothing to do with broadening the party’s appeal.

I remember when I met you back in 1999, when you were first playing around with presidential politics, and you were talking about breaking up the two-party paradigm and making government work. I think there’s a version of you that could have run that campaign this time, had there been any real market for it.

I don’t think you started out thinking you would demonize immigrant groups or attack powerful women. I think you realized early on where the most visceral emotion was in the Republican electorate, and you seized on it, because that’s what you’re great at.

And if it makes the rest of the party cringe, then so be it, right? Because the anger you’re channeling is something you feel, too. You know what it’s like to suffer the contempt of the enlightened, and they don’t. You’ve known it all your life.

So this has become your theory of the race — not to persuade anyone of your underlying prudence or intellect, but to galvanize huge numbers of enraged white men (and a lot of enraged white women, too) who feel left behind, Americans who fear social change and despise their political leadership.

That’s been the unrelenting theme of this convention, the darkest and most divisive such gathering any of us have ever seen, from one bilious speaker to the next.

There’s no joy or idealism here in Cleveland. It’s like Reagan’s “morning in America” — if you were being hanged in the morning.

And if your entire candidacy is going to be a conduit for rage, Donald, then you might as well ride it. Go off script. Wave your hands like a madman. Feed off the crowd. Make the convention into a primetime rally.

You won’t lose anything. Your audience will love it. Everyone else is already repulsed.

You see, Donald, here’s what I’ve been thinking about as I’ve watched your children speak so eloquently at the convention. Joe Kennedy understood that his kids could be legit but he never could — no matter how many titles he held or how much money he amassed. He invested all his ambition in them.

Donald Jr. and Ivanka will likely command the respect of the political and financial establishments, too, and that’s a testament to what you’ve built. But even if the insiders end up calling you “Mr. President,” they’ll always see the kid from Queens with the garish decor.

So don’t play-act at someone else’s idea of legitimacy. Be angry. Be coarse. Be yourself.

Let the people decide who’s legit and who isn’t.

_____

Related slideshows:

On the ground at the GOP convention — a photo report >>>

‘Boos Cruz’: Newspapers react to Ted Cruz’s RNC stunner >>>

Armed at the RNC >>>

Front pages cover Donald Trump’s final primary victory >>>

Melania Trump in the convention spotlight >>>

Convention floor erupts when no roll call taken to change rules to unbind delegates >>>

How newspapers covered the RNC’s fiery first day >>>

Demonstrators protest outside the RNC >>>

Donald Trump’s America >>>