Scarborough, Shrum Battle Over Obama's Spending (VIDEO)

Bob Shrum was a guest on Monday's edition of Morning Joe on MSNBC, participating in a discussion that soon trailed off into something of a shoutfest. Shrum begins by making a good point, on the disbelief that President Obama can possibly tend to more than one issue at the same time. "I think the Beltway culture and the talk culture has been tougher on Obama then the public has," he said, "and the [reason the] public gives him big ratings -- is that they know he's got all these problems on his hands." He added, "I was listening to you guys earlier, talking about him laughing, on 60 Minutes...it reminded me of Roosevelt and Reagan and Kennedy, who had the capacity under very difficult circumstances to laugh, to look at something ruefully and ironically and move on."

Unfortunately for Shrum, Scarborough had the dire Congressional Budget Office deficit projections on the brain, and was sore afraid at the thought of additional deficit spending on stuff like health care or education. Circa 2009, is there any other kind of spending? As Shrum points out, the CBO has historically struggled with their batting average, where predictions are concerned. But really, it's dismaying to see one more person, in this case Scarborough, who doesn't seem to understand the relationship between better health care and energy policy and economic revival. CNBC's Donnie Deutsch, who seems to want to have it both ways, grabs a pair of the same one-thing-at-a-time blinders, and joins in. Le sigh!

[WATCH.]

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