When it rains, it pours on Obama. From USA/Gallup’s survey:

The public’s confidence in President Obama’s ability to handle the economy is eroding amid concern about higher federal spending and expanding government power, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds — a development that could complicate his efforts to push a health care plan through Congress in the next few weeks.

In the survey, taken Friday through Sunday, Americans by 49%-47% disapprove of his handling of the economy, and by 44%-50% disapprove of his handling of health care.

His overall approval rating was 55%, the lowest of his young presidency. That puts Obama 10th among the 12 post–World War II presidents at this point in their tenures. When he took office, he ranked 7th.

[. . .]

• 59% say his proposals call for too much government spending.

• 52% say they call for too much expansion of government power.

• Expectations about when the economy will recover are souring. In February, the mean or average prediction for a turnaround was 4.1 years; now it’s 5.5 years.

• There’s limited faith in his economic stimulus package, especially when asked for its likely impact on their own finances. A third predict it will make things better for their families in the long term; a third say it will make things worse.

For Obama, “the trouble is it might make the policies more popular by being associated with him,” says presidential historian H.W. Brands of the University of Texas at Austin. “But it’s almost equally possible that it will make him less popular by linking him with those policies.”

Perhaps, then, if Obama wants health-care reform to pass, he should lay low rather than take the lead. It seems he may be a drag on the cause he holds dearest.