CNN contributor Bill Bennett talks to CNN's John Roberts about President Obama's seemingly unscathed image.

President Obama hasn't shied away from controversy during his first hundred days, but a keen ability to rebound from criticism has some critics wondering why the outrage doesn't stick. CNN Political Contributor Bill Bennett is the author of "The American Patriot’s Almanac." He spoke with John Roberts on CNN’s “American Morning” Thursday.

John Roberts: The president attracted a fair amount of controversy at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago last week when he shook hands and was all smiles with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. It prompted Jonathan Martin in Politico to write, “Several times a month in his young presidency, Barack Obama has done things that cause conservatives to bray, using the phrase once invoked by Bob Dole, ‘Where’s the outrage?!’” The president seems pretty Teflon in his first hundred days. A lot of stuff just kind of bounces off of him.

Bill Bennett: Yeah. The American people are giving him a lot of breaks. It is the first hundred days. They like him. They voted for him. They elected him. They want him to succeed. All of that is understandable. The second hundred days is going to be different. These are no longer matters of photo-ops with Hugo Chavez. What he has unleashed with the CIA interrogation memo is the furies. This is going to be a major issue and I think an embarrassment and problem for him. Maybe more important, you know, CNN has been great on this, covering the situation in Pakistan. This is the real world. This isn't the warm-up now. This isn’t rehearsal. This is the real game now. If the Taliban moves in on the capital of Pakistan, we are talking about serious international crisis, and then we'll find out about our Commander in Chief.

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[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/04/23/art_avlon_cnn.jpg caption="John Avlon was director of speechwriting and deputy director of policy for Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign."]

By John Avlon
The Daily Beast

After last week’s tea party tax protests, President Obama acknowledged “a confidence gap, when it comes to the American people. And we’ve got to earn their trust.”

Democrats have been slapped with the tax and spend liberal label for decades – and candidate Obama spent much time on the campaign trail trying to distance himself from that legacy. “When I'm president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely,” he promised, offering assurance to the moderate majority of Americans that his would be an administration dedicated to fiscal responsibility.

Of course, all that was before the fiscal crisis and neo-Keynisan Kool-Aid started to be passed around Capitol Hill, with congressmen chugging it by the billions as the deficit ballooned.

This week, President Obama tried to square his young administration’s record with his campaign rhetoric by announcing a commitment to cut $100 million dollars in wasteful spending at his first cabinet meeting.

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