Late in George W. Bush’s first term, the conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer coined the term “Bush Derangement Syndrome,” which he defined as “the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency — nay — the very existence of George W. Bush.” In other words, there were a whole bunch of people, presumably on the left, who not only didn’t like George W. Bush, but also disliked him to an irrational and perhaps unhinged degree. By coining a “syndrome” to describe the state, Krauthammer, a formerly practicing psychiatrist with an M.D. from Harvard, was injecting a clever bit of gas-lighting into the debate. (Are you sure there’s not something else going on with you, Bush haters? Have you considered getting help?)

I remember thinking at the time that one could apply the same “derangement syndrome” diagnosis to opponents of Bill Clinton during his presidency. And you certainly could apply it to opponents of the Muslim socialist from Kenya who golfs in his mom jeans while Americans are being beheaded. All successful politicians today stir up strong feelings. We live in a time of easy applause lines, obvious devils and reflexive loyalties.

In other words, our politics are “polarized,” which, in the most basic dictionary sense, means we have “become concentrated around opposing extremes.” More and more of us do appear to be locked deep into our political mind-set: A recent Gallup poll found that in Obama’s sixth year in office, 79 percent of Democrats approved of his performance, compared with 9 percent of Republicans, while Bush’s numbers in his sixth year were the exact opposite (79 percent of Republicans approved, only 9 percent of Democrats). Looking at those figures, the pollsters at Gallup concluded that Obama and Bush — who each ran on the promise of uniting the country — could go down as the two “most polarizing” presidents to date.

But who is polarizing whom? To say that Hillary Rodham Clinton is a polarizing figure — as people do all the time — is to suggest that politics was like a big campfire singalong until this pantsuited fomenter showed up and turned us all against one another. Not true. No one person is to blame, or thousand people, or president, or talking head. The country has been divided for a long time and for a variety of reasons: the flood of money into the political system; the perverse proliferation and specialization of negative ads; partisan news channels; and the proverbial “coarsening of our culture.” Clinton is a product of that environment. She has adapted to it and at times thrived in it, but she hardly caused it.