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In late July, the Pew Research Center reported that President Obama had lost significant ground handling the economy and the deficit, with approval ratings on the economy tumbling from 56% in February to 38% in July and approval ratings on the deficit dropping from 50% in April to 32% in July. No single factor explains the erosion except "cumulative sticker shock." Democrats have misread the mood on the public's appetite for more government.

Americans are generally ambivalent about government. We're a rich country and we expect Washington to do many things. At the same time, we see our government as wasteful, inefficient, too expensive and expansive. We are conditionally pulled back and forth between those views--but it wasn't always so.

Polls conducted from the end of World War II to around 1965 show that most Americans equated actions taken by the federal government with progress. That began to change in the mid-1960s, and the pendulum swung in the direction of government as a problem causer, not a problem solver. Trust and confidence in our government declined sharply. When Ronald Reagan won the presidency in 1980, he captured the public mood perfectly when he said in his inaugural address that government wasn't the solution to our problems.

Attitudes toward the federal government have ticked up a few times since then for very short periods. In 1984 and 1985, when people were feeling better about the country's economy and leadership in Washington, attitudes toward our government improved. In the late 1990s and early part of this decade, when the economy was humming, we felt more positive once again. And then the pendulum swung again, immediately after 9/11, and people placed their trust in Washington to respond to the terrorist attacks. But Americans quickly returned to a more skeptical frame of mind.

During the 2008 campaign, Americans initially supported federal efforts to shore up the financial system, but their skepticism about bank bailouts grew. They opposed the auto rescues from the get go. Initially, they supported the stimulus, but opposition to it, and to the second stimulus plan, has grown. While the deficit is usually an issue with little political intensity, the big numbers bandied about recently in the headlines have gotten people's attention. And then came health care and headlines about a trillion-dollar price tag over the next decade.

Perhaps surprisingly, Americans are less generous about what they want government to do when times are tough. Pew recently updated some questions on government spending. In nine of 10 areas where it was possible to compare attitudes from April 2001, when Americans felt good about the economy, with attitudes today, people are less enthusiastic about increasing spending. Don't get me wrong. Strong majorities still want government to do a lot in the areas Pew probed, but the responses are down, reflecting concern about the economic climate today.

To take just one of the areas Pew explored: In April 2001, 71% said government should increase spending on health care. In the new poll, 61% gave that response. In a question asked by CBS News in June 2009, 56% said government was doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals, with only 34% saying government should do more to solve national problems.

While some of the sentiment at recent town hall meetings may be orchestrated, much of it is real. The weight of opinion about government today is that it is getting too big. In this environment, the big health care bill envisioned by House Democrats is going to come under serious public scrutiny. Americans just aren't in the mood. That's why in most polls, the president's ratings on handling health care are down too.

Karlyn Bowman is a senior fellow at AEI.