Is Obama to blame for the polarization in country?

“President Barack Obama,” writes Jamelle Bouie of The American Prospect, “is the most polarizing president in Gallup polling history.” Bouie is described in his bio at the magazine’s website as “a writing fellow,” which suggests he ought to be able to do a better job of reading the text at Gallup Politics that accompanies the table he copies and pastes. It states:

Obama's Year Three average 68-percentage-point partisan gap is tied for the fourth highest in Gallup records dating back to the Eisenhower administration. Only George W. Bush's fourth, fifth, and sixth years in office showed higher degrees of political polarization. [Emphasis added]

Nevertheless, the general point he is making—that the nation is historically polarized under Obama—is accurate. But what inquiring minds, like Bouie’s, want to know is whose fault it is. The first person Obama usually blames for the nation’s ills is George W. Bush (who, as above quote acknowledges, was also more polarizing than Obama).

By way of an answer to his own question, Bouie writes:

[P]residents themselves aren’t responsible for the increase in polarization. That Republicans and Democrats have a stark contrast in opinions on the performance of President Obama has less to do with Obama, and everything to do with the public itself, which has grown more ideological and more partisan over the last 30 years.

There is no denying that partisanship has increased in recent decades. In fact, I’m inclined to agree with another American Prospect columnist, Ezra Klein, who opined that bipartisanship is overrated and largely unattainable.

But the claim that “presidents themselves aren’t responsible for the increase in polarization” deserves a closer look, as does Obama’s behavior during his three years in office toward those who disagree with him. Here are several of many examples:

In October 2011, Obama told a crowd of supporters:

This week I’m asking members of Congress to vote—what we’re gonna do is break up my jobs bill. Maybe they just couldn’t understand the whole thing all at once.

In May 2011, appearing in El Paso, he said on the topic of border security:

We have gone above and beyond what was requested by the very Republicans who said they supported broader [immigration] reform as long as we got serious about enforcement…. But even though we’ve answered these concerns, I suspect there are some who will try to move the goalposts on us—again. They said we needed to triple the border patrol. Now they’ll say we need to quadruple the border patrol. Or they’ll want a higher fence. Maybe they’ll need a moat. Maybe they’ll want alligators in the moat.

In April 2011, he called then-rising GOP star Donald Trump a “carnival barker” for raising questions about Obama’s place of birth.

In April 2010, he ridiculed the press for demanding information on his health care reform bill”:

Can you imagine if some of these reporters were working on a farm? You planted some seeds and they came out the next day: 'Nothing's happened. There's no crop. We're gonna to starve. Oh, no! It's a disaster!'

When reading these quotes, the words sarcasm, arrogance, and rigidity come to mind. These are qualities that, if you are a member of the dissenting faction, are likely to strike you as antagonistic and make you feel antipathetic toward their speaker. As the crowd reaction in this video (ca 5:17) of one of the statements reveals, the remarks strike supporters as amusing and make them feel sympathetic toward their speaker. In other words, the comments are polarizing— and so is the figure responsible for them.

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