Speaker Pelosi's Popularity Rises, as Does Confidence in Congress

By Scott Horton

A new opinion poll commissioned by ABC and the Washington Post charts the consequences of the concerted attack launched by Vice President Dick Cheney, and bolstered through his buddy Fred Hiatt at the Washington Post, against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. As Bush's approval remains in the Nixonian range of the upper twenties and lower thirties, Pelosi hits 53 percent—an historically high figure for a Speaker of the House. At the same time, the public—by a wide margin of 58 percent to 33 percent—expresses a preference for the Congress to determine policy in the Iraq war, and not the White House. Once again, the Washington punditry is shown to be way off the mark in its pronouncements about public opinion.