During a recent interview with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, conservative commentator Glenn Beck was asked to reflect about his time at the network telling Kelly, “I remember it as an awful lot of fun and that I made an awful lot of mistakes, and I wish I could go back and be more uniting in my language. I think I played a role, unfortunately, in helping tear the country apart.”

There is no doubt that Beck ultimately expedited the polarization of the United States, causing a severe divide in our political system where even trying to compromise with a person of the opposite political party became viewed as a weakness. Bipartisanship is not a weakness; working together is how the founding fathers were able to create America.

Instead of a work-together attitude, Beck and many others help create a “my way or the highway” attitude that a lot of conservatives decided to take, including numerous policymakers across the country. This approach is not the way to lead anything, especially a country of significant magnitude like the United States.

Now Beck was only a catalyst to America’s political polarization; to find the source we must look back at the 2008 presidential election.

When Republican nominee Sen. John McCain decided on his vice presidential pick, he tapped the then-little-known Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be on his ticket. Picking Palin sent a jolt into an already-exciting election, but little did McCain and the country know that she would set off everything that would lead to today’s hyper-partisan politics.

During the general election, Palin used attack lines on then-Sen. Barack Obama that made him seem different than Americans. During one stump speech, Palin said, “This is not a man who sees America as you see it and how I see America. We see America as the greatest force for good in this world … Our opponent though, is someone who sees America it seems as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”

This type of inflammatory language kept feeding anti-Obama people, and their coalition just kept growing and growing until it basically enveloped most of the Republican Party. This sentiment has caused a rift in Washington, where Republicans cannot even think about supporting a policy initiative of the president’s without looking like they are embracing him.

That is wrong. Politicians should not put party first. Politicians should put country first.

While it seems like our political polarization is here to stay — at least for the remainder of Obama’s second term — it could have been prevented.

Beck said that he could have used more uniting language when he was on Fox News; he’s right, he could have, but he did not. But even if Beck did use more uniting language, we would probably still have a highly polarized United States.

It is going to take a woman to end the current era of hyper-partisan politics, and that woman is not Palin. The only woman that will end America’s polarization is former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.