CBS political correspondent John Dickerson reported that President Obama has a tough job ahead of him to sell his signature legislative accomplishment, Obamacare, to the public in an interview on Friday morning.
Dickerson described the healthcare legislation as "particularly ugly," "complicated," and "bumpy" in its implementation.
NORAH O’DONNELL: Why does the administration feel they need to do this?
JOHN DICKERSON: This is the President's signature achievement of his presidency regardless of what happens to come. Unlike what we normally see which is the President campaigning for a law to get it passed, now it's passed and he has to go out there and sell it for both policy and political reasons. On the policy front, he needs more people to sign up because that will keep costs lower, particularly younger Americans. If those younger Americans don't join these new exchanges, the premiums will go up because the people who do join the exchanges will be the chronically ill. So he's got to sell it to make it work better, so that's the policy piece, and politically Republicans are gunning for this for the 2014 elections. They're hoping the run against all democrats on this, so the President has to goes out there and provide cover, explain why there are good parts of it and get out there and sort of rebut these attacks as best he can.
O’DONNELL: But, John, it sounds like the White House says this is going to sound like a pre-mother's day speech. The President is ging to be speaking to mothers. We know the preventative services provided by Obamacare are some of the most popular parts of the plan but what about the story tlike Jan Crawford reported on earlier this week that small businesses still don't know how they're going to make this work.
DICKERSON: Well they don't know how they're going to make it work so the President has to explain it. He has get out there and talk about the way it will work, but this is not a pretty piece of legislation. Remember how it was put together. This is not a sleek operation with Swiss watch timing, and so it's going to be bumpy and it's going to be ugly as it gets implemented. The best thing the President can do is to try and accentuate the best parts and also educate people because there's no better voice for educating it than the President.
CHARLIE ROSE: You anticipated my question, John. Is this simply badly constructed legislation?
DICKERSON: Well, all legislation is pretty ugly and this was particularly ugly because of the way it was put together and it had to be jammed through at the end. So this is -- and it's complicated. It's dealing with bringing millions of new people into this insurance system. It's forcing people to change the way they do things, and so it's got lots and lots of different moving parts, and also, by the way, when Democrats talk about train wreck here, what they're saying, some of them, is Republicans have not funded this as much as we, the Democrats would like, and also Republicans governors are dragging their feet so there's opposition that's constant here.