Not really. The Bush administration accelerated the polarization of post-Cold War American public culture, which the Obama presidency failed to truly heal. It’s hard to be stunned when everything is progressing (or rather regressing) into tribalism and atomization as it has been for decades, just louder and more obnoxiously.

> which the Obama presidency failed to truly heal

Hard to succeed at solving a problem when your actions seem almost perfectly tailored to exacerbate it.

I'm not going to relitigate the Obama era. Democrats seem incapable of understanding that the "clinging to guns, religion" comment, and the policies that follow from such a stance, were divisive.

For all of its faults, I do not believe the Obama administration came up with the Tea Party Movement or Birtherism.

Not everything is politically motivated.