Gallup:

Although the Affordable Care Act of 2010 has dominated the news recently, with coverage exploding Thursday as the Supreme Court ruled to uphold the law, few Americans so far in 2012 mention healthcare when asked to identify the most important problem facing the country. Six percent say healthcare is the top problem in June, behind mentions of the economy, jobs, the deficit, and problems in government. The current 6% who mention healthcare is slightly below the average of 8% of Americans who since January 2001 have mentioned healthcare as the nation’s top problem.

They point out that this number increases dramatically when there is public debate about legislation on the issue, mostly in the first two years of Bill Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s presidencies. Of course, when the perception that health care is a “problem” spikes, the question doesn’t differentiate between those who think it’s a problem that requires the legislation being debated and those who think the legislation itself is the problem.

Do not forget this anecdote from New York magazine, November 29, 2009:

But the most damaging consequence of all may have been inside the White House, where bullishness about how rapidly the stimulus would kick in led to foolish projections that unemployment would peak at 8 percent—and where the bill’s passage bred a certain cockiness and complacency about the need to drive a sustained economic message in the months thereafter. “I recently talked to a very senior friend of mine in the White House, and I said, ‘How did we not spend a year talking about the economy?’ ” a Democratic think-tank maven recalls. “And he said, ‘Look, I think Barack did the stimulus and he thought he checked the box and he moved on.’ I said, ‘That’s not governing, dude. That’s some other thing.’ ”

“Barack did the stimulus, and he thought he checked the box and moved on.” Of course, unemployment remained high, and the economy continued to struggle through this year. Obama moved on, of course, to Obamacare, phenomenally unpopular legislation that may very well be found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

It would be bad enough for a president to presume that economic recovery was “done” and to move on to another agenda item. But to do so for legislation struck down about two years later…