Today's must-read from Peggy Noonan

In his new role as the president's press secretary, Tony Snow should assign someone to read Peggy Noonan every time she puts a word down on paper (dead-tree or digital), and generate a report on its contents; he should then incorporate that into the policy discussions he's supposedly involved with.

Noonan has an incredible insight into the American thought pattern, and an incredible ability to summarize it into a coherent narrative that leaves one thinking, "Well, duh." Today's column in Opinion Journal is no exception. It offers suggestions on where President Bush should focus his energies in the last 1,000 days of his administration. The areas, with little snippits from Noonan, are:

Issue 1: Iraq, Afghanistan and the age of terror.

We already know liberty is God's gift to man; make statements that are less emotive and more fact-filled, more strategically coherent . . . Find Osama -- it is a scandal that the man who started the new era is still free, still taunting the West, still inspiring those who see the world as he does. It was a mistake to think finding him was not as important as a wider war on terror. Finding him is key. It is almost five years since he did what he did. Get him, try him, kill him.

Issue 2: the economy.

This is President Bush's triumph. And yet in polls Americans don't credit him with it. (My hunch: Americans, a deeply savvy lot, never want to tell a politician he's doing well on the economy because their applause may lead him to feel he can shift focus to, say, colonizing Mars. Americans always name prosperity in retrospect. In real time they like to keep the pressure on.) . . . The president should talk about the economy -- not in a braying, bragging way but in an instructive, engaged way that discusses the philosophy and actions that allowed the market to do what it wants to do, grow . . . Did the tax cuts, at the end of the day, help the economy? Why? How? Will a change in the tax structure, or will making permanent the tax cuts, help? What impact does high federal government spending have on the economy? Where should we go on that, and why? Talk about the flow of money in America.

Issue 3: the integrity of America's borders.

This is both an economic issue and a national security issue; it naturally connects to issues 1 and 2. On this, Washington is talking a lot and doing nothing . . . Close down illegal immigration, now. Then talk. (A hunch for liberals: Your views will be received with greater generosity once the air of daily crisis is removed.)

Read the whole thing.