#Considering ‘Trumpism’ and other commentary

President Trump’s ideology, or “Trumpism,” hinges on what he has done in office, not “what he said,” Victor Davis Hanson contends at American Greatness. He has strengthened our relationship with Israel, made the United States energy independent by expanding “fracking and horizontal drilling” and punished rogue states such as Russia, Iran and China. He has opposed illegal immigration, “a threat to the wages and viability of US workers,” and is “finally making progress” on his southern border wall. He has appointed “constructionist federal judges,” defended the Bill of Rights and opposed “violence in the streets.” He may trail in the polls, but “Americans at some point empathize with an underdog” who fought on their behalf — and did “not give up when bullied.”

Iconoclast: On Education, Let Parents Pick

Schools should let parents “pick their poison” on how to educate their children this coming September, argues The Week’s Bonnie Kristian. No existing option is particularly good: Reopening schools may lead to “outbreaks”; online and “hybrid” learning “doesn’t work well for younger children”; learning pods cost parents “around $12,000 a year per student.” The best choice, then, is giving parents access to “the money their school district spends annually on their kids” — and letting them decide how to spend it. “The national average of per-student spending is $12,612 as of 2018, which is enough to join a pod of six students,” and even smaller sums would cover “private or charter school” tuition. In “this bewildering moment,” a voucher program is just “the decent thing to do.”

Conservative: Harris Is Worse than Hillary

Kamala Harris presents “a major threat to the constitutional order, to the economy and to established norms” — warns National Review’s Kyle Smith — and “stands an excellent chance” of succeeding Joe Biden to the presidency if the duo win in November. She’s so far left, in fact, that she makes 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton “look moderate” by comparison. Unlike Clinton, Harris unequivocally wants “a single-payer federal health-care plan” that covers illegal immigrants and “said we should decriminalize unauthorized border crossings.” She also holds “the most extreme position on abortion imaginable” and has “fully backed the Green New Deal” as a senator. “Making someone as extreme as Kamala Harris a president-in-waiting,” in short, is “a bone-chilling prospect.”

Libertarian: It’s Not COVID Killing the USPS

The House-proposed $25 billion bailout won’t solve the woes of the United States Postal Service, explains Eric Boehm at Reason; “it’s unlikely that any amount of cash will be enough to stabilize the agency’s finances.” The USPS is on track to lose more than $13 billion this year, but that’s just “an acceleration of an ongoing trend, not a new problem created by the coronavirus.” Why has it lost $69 billion since 2007, while its unfunded liabilities for retiree pensions and health care top $119 billion? “Congress has rejected proposals that would free the postal service to operate more like a business, instead requiring the agency to deliver mail everywhere six days per week regardless of cost efficiency.” The best hope: “Privatizing it in whole or in part” so it could “make smart changes to its business model while guaranteeing that taxpayers aren’t on the hook for yet another massive bailout in a year or two.”

Eye on the economy: Nat’l Debt Is Clobbering Us

The US economy would be “much worse” if Washington hadn’t borrowed “heavily” during the pandemic, but the feds’ “burgeoning debt will have ramifications,” warns Mike Patton at Forbes. “With debt approaching $27 trillion” and projected to hit $45 trillion by 2024 (per usdebtclock.org figures), expect “systemic problems” that, “at some point, may be impossible to escape.” The government may try to raise taxes, but “you cannot tax your way to prosperity.” If Joe Biden wins, government will expand, taxes will climb and the economy may slow. If debt hits those levels, the nation will “feel the pain as labor markets tighten, the gap between the top 10 percent and the bottom 50 percent widens and social unrest grows.” Keep in mind, too, that — as Ronald Reagan noted — “as government expands, liberty contracts.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board