Former Obama senior adviser and ABC News contributor David Plouffe said on "This Week" Sunday that the Affordable Care Act will "work really well" when all states run their own health care exchanges and fully expand Medicaid - actions that may not be seen until President Obama is out of office in 2017.

"This program was designed to be implemented by the states. And in most of the states that are running their exchanges it's going quite well," Plouffe told ABC's George Stephanopoulos. "You talked about Medicaid expansion. I think it's just a fact, and it may take until 2017 when this president leaves office, you're going to see almost every state in this country running their own exchanges eventually and expanding Medicaid. And I think it'll work really well then."

But Plouffe said as improvements are made to HealthCare.gov in the coming months, President Obama may be able to regain confidence in his health care law, and in his own political standing by early next year.

"Let's fast forward to the State of the Union and the months after that. Health care working better, a lot of people signing up, the economy continuing to strengthen, hopefully no Washington shutdowns," Plouffe said. "I think the president's numbers will recover. I think people's confidence will recover."

"I think people trust this president," Plouffe added. "I think there have been numbers all over the place, but I'm confident in a few months from now, those trust numbers are going to come up."

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Republican Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, joining Plouffe on the "This Week" powerhouse roundtable, offered a more gloomy assessment for President Obama's signature healthcare law and the political consequences for the president

"Well look, you never get a second chance to make a first impression and the first impression here was terrible. And I think it's going to be an unfolding disaster for the president," Cole said.

"There's going to be some winners, there's no question about that, but there's going to be millions of losers, too. People are going to find out their rates going up, people that have insurance they like are going to be losing it. It's one of the reasons for the postponement of the business mandate," he said.

"You know, the individual market is pretty tiny compared to what's yet to come. And I think as that unfolds, this thing is going to be an unmitigated political disaster for the president," Cole said.