Donald Trump at 70, just the way he is

Donald Trump turns 70 on Tuesday, and many Republicans seem to be hoping ( praying?) for a later- in- life metamorphosis. “He’s going to have to stop with gratuitous personal insults,” said Sen. Susan Collins. “He will have to earn the presidency by demonstrating that he has the temperament for the job,” added Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers.

Sound advice, no doubt. But expecting Trump to change significantly as he enters his eighth decade is like marrying a man and expecting to reform all the qualities you don’t like. Ask any wife about the prospect of that happening. At 30. Or 50. Much less at 70.

If elected, in fact, Trump would be the oldest person to assume the presidency, topping Ronald Reagan, who was 69 when he took office in 1981. Trump has run a remarkably high- energy campaign, careening from nighttime speeches to interviews on the early- morning news shows.

According to his longtime personal physician, the billionaire businessman had “astonishingly excellent” results in his latest exam, shows “extraordinary” physical strength and stamina, and “will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” The statement was attributed to Dr. Harold Bornstein, though it reads more like something you’d get from the Kremlin about Vladimir Putin, or a news release from some future Trump College of Medical Knowledge.

The main concerns about Trump, of course, aren’t physical. They’re psychological.

Dan P. McAdams, a psychology professor at Northwestern University, writes in The Atlantic that Trump exhibits “sky- high extroversion combined with off- thechart low agreeableness” along with classic signs of grandiose narcissism. Narcissists can sometimes achieve great things. They also need to hog the spotlight.

The candidate’s @ realDonaldTrump Twitter feed serves as a sort of direct line to his mind, so it was no surprise that soon after Sunday’s massacre in Orlando he tweeted about … Donald Trump: “Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism.”

Anyone expecting Trump to suddenly pivot to a more traditional presidential demeanor should remember that social scientists say personality is relatively consistent and stable after the age of 30. That’s one reason the “new” Richard Nixon who ran for president in 1968 turned out to be a lot like the old Nixon.

And from Trump’s point of view, even if he could execute an extreme makeover at his relatively advanced age, why should he? Confounding the pundits and ignoring the experts, he bested 16 GOP rivals and captured his party’s presidential nomination by doing things his way.

In Just the Way You Are, Billy Joel sings, “Don’t go changing to try and please me.” With septuagenarian Donald Trump, there’s not much chance of that happening. Just ask him. “You think I’m going to change?” he said at a news conference last month. “I’m not changing.”