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The more Bush speaks, the less support his positions receive. Check out some of the topline results - courtesy of Carpetbagger - from the latest Washington Post poll:

* After weeks of relentless criticism, Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s approval rating is up to 53%, a point Newt Gingrich never reached.

* Congress’ approval rating is at a four-year high.

* 54% of Americans approve of the way Democrats in Congress are doing their job (the highest in over a decade). Only 39% say they approve of congressional Republicans.

* 58% believe Dems in Congress are taking a stronger leadership role in the government than Bush.

Here's the Post's take on what the data says about the war in Iraq:

Democrats appear to be standing on firm political ground, as they work toward a final bill. A Washington Post-ABC News poll of 1,141 adults, conducted April 12-15, found that 58 percent trusted the Democrats in Congress to do a better job handling the situation in Iraq, compared with 33 percent who trusted Bush.

The president has taken advantage of Congress's spring recess to pound Democrats over their legislation, which would impose benchmarks for the Iraqi government to meet; create strict rules for resting, equipping and training combat troops; and set a 2008 date for the final withdrawal of U.S. troops. Despite those efforts, Bush has lost a little ground to Democrats, who in February were trusted by 54 percent to set Iraq policy.

Pessimism about the war has continued to grow. For the first time, a narrow majority of Americans, 51 percent, said the United States will lose the battle, compared with 35 percent who said the United States will win.

Bush continued yesterday to say that victory in Iraq is pivotal to the larger fight against terrorism, but Americans are increasingly agreeing with the Democratic view that the issues are separate. About 57 percent now say the United States can succeed in the terrorism fight without winning the Iraq war, an increase of 10 percentage points since January, when Americans were almost evenly divided on the question.

Kevin Drum is dead on with his comparison to Bush's efforts to make Social Security an issue after the 2004 election. The more Bush talked about privatization, the less people liked the idea, and for awhile, the less people liked the idea, the more Bush talked about it. Eventually the whole thing went into a death spiral and Bush was forced to drop the issue.

This time around, however, the issue is not going to go away. Iraq isn't going to go away, and the supplemental funding will have to be provided. Based on today's polling data, there isn't any reason to think that the Democrats in congress should give an inch on this. Provide the funding, but provide it with benchmarks that require clear signs of progress. If escalation works, we all win. And if it does not, there's not much point in staying anyway. Its not as if the Democrats were calling for an immediate or complete withdrawal.

All that said, I think considerably more thought needs to be given to what will happen if the Democrats win this battle. This administration has shown itself both unwilling and unable to plan effectively for anything other than an election. If this bill passes and escalation fails, withdrawal will begin. What can we the people and our congress do to make sure that we get our of Iraq with far more consideration and care than we showed going in?

UPDATE: Glenn Greewald digs into the data and comes up with a great find:

A principal reason why Congress is not more popular is because a very substantial portion of liberals and Democrats are expressing dissatisfaction with Congress -- presumably because (at least many of them) believe that Congress is being insufficiently resolute in opposing Bush and the war.

It is customary for one party to express "approval" for the branch of government controlled by that party. For instance, in the latest Los Angeles Times poll (.pdf), President Bush is wildly unpopular among Americans generally (they disapprove 62-36%), but a large majority of "conservatives" (63-36%) and especially Republicans (81-17%) approve of Bush's performance.

But even with Democratic control of Congress, liberals are split almost evenly on whether they approve of the job Congress is doing (they actually disapprove by 46-45%), and Democrats are evenly split (45-45%). If liberals and Democrats supported their Congress even close to the levels of Republican support for Bush, Congress' approval numbers would be vastly higher still.

To the extent that Congress' popularity is as low as it is, it is due almost entirely to the dissatisfaction among many liberals and Democrats in what Congress has thus far done. And indeed, much of the Democratic criticism of Pelosi has come from liberals who believe (rightly or wrongly) that she has not been sufficiently aggressive in opposing the President and the war. All of this suggests that Congress's lower-than-expected popularity is due not to the belief that they have been too aggressive in opposing the President, but the belief that they have not been aggressive enough.