In a new survey, Politico confirms that Obama may not be the best spokesman for health care. People seem to be losing “trust” in him:

[T]he number of Americans who say they trust the president has fallen from 66 percent to 54 percent. At the same time, the percentage of those who say they do not trust the president has jumped from 31 to 42.

The president’s party has taken a similar hit since the last Public Trust Monitor poll, with only 42 percent of respondents saying that they trust the Democratic Party, compared with 52 percent who do not. The party’s numbers are nearly the inverse of March’s survey, in which 52 percent said they trusted Democrats and 42 percent did not.

And they really don’t trust his sales pitch on health care:

Asked what effect a government-managed health care coverage option would have on access to health services, 40 percent said it would make the situation worse, 38 percent said it would make it better and 22 percent said it would remain the same. Asked what its effect would be on the quality of health care, 42 percent said it would make health care worse, 33 percent said it would make it better and 25 percent said it would not have an effect.

Nearly half of respondents — 44 percent — believe government-managed coverage will increase the price of health care. Only 27 percent think a government-managed health care system would lower costs, while 29 percent said prices would remain the same.

What isn’t clear is whether we have a cause-and-effect connection here. Do people trust the president less because he is pushing things they know not to be the case (e.g., government health care is good for you! The stimulus is working!)? Or, do people distrust the items on Obama’s agenda because he is doing the sales pitch? Hard to tell.

What we do know is that the two assumptions underlying Obama’s agenda are now in doubt. First, the Obama team banked on the president’s overwhelming personal popularity and aura of calm to make extreme and radical measures seem perfectly reasonable. He doesn’t want to run car companies. He doesn’t like spending money. All of that was supposed to keep the critics at bay and the public lulled into a sense of calm. Now fewer people are buying his lines.

Second, Obama was convinced the economic crisis would engender greater faith in government and greater mistrust in the private sector, greasing the skids for a huge government takeover of private firms and of the health-care industry. That too is proving not to be the case:

Only 44 percent of those polled said the federal government is headed on the right track. In March, only a few months into Obama’s presidency, 54 percent said the federal government was on the right track, up 19 percentage points from the closing days of the Bush administration in December. Meanwhile, trust in the federal government has dropped from 63 percent to 58 percent since March, while trust that it will manage its finances responsibly has fallen from 40 percent to 32 percent during that time.

[. . .]

Support for further regulation of American business has also dropped off markedly. Just under half of those polled said regulation of corporations should be increased, down from 61 percent in March. In addition, a plurality of 40 percent of Americans fear the federal government will go too far in regulating financial institutions, up 9 percentage points from March, when voters were more worried that the government would not go far enough in regulating financial firms.

At the same time, nearly two-thirds of those polled fear the government will provide too much financial help to ailing companies, up from just over half of those polled in March.

As support for regulation has dropped, trust in American business has increased.

While 59 percent still do not trust corporations to do the right thing, the number who do has ticked up from 37 percent to 41 percent. At the same time, despite lagging economic indicators, 53 percent of the poll’s respondents believe American business is on the right track. In March, only 40 percent said the same.

The president still has a reservoir of public support, a cheerleading media, and huge majorities in Congress. He therefore still may get his way on health care and the rest of his agenda. But the question remains: Will the voters reject the results and the politicians who pushed a massive government expansion on them? Stay tuned.