President Trump is making single life great again, at least for one Florida woman who says she’s divorcing her husband in part over his inability to deal with her love for the commander-in-chief. According to divorce records, Palm Beach State Attorney Dave Aronberg and his wife, Lynn Aronberg, a former Miami Dolphins cheerleader, are parting ways for a variety of reasons ranging from his unwillingness to have children to her politics. “A staunch Republican and supporter of President Donald Trump, Lynn also said she felt increasingly isolated in the marriage,” their public relations release stated. Dave Aronberg is a Democrat. Lynn is a Republican.
“It wasn’t an issue at first, but that was before the Hillary-Trump saga,” she explained. “And as that built, the tension in our relationship built.”
Dave Aronberg was tangentially involved in the 2016 election when he dropped assault charges against then-Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. He worked with Trump at Mar-a-Lago for years, but after Trump’s political rise, attempted to distance himself. “I’m walking through the red carpet,” Lynn stated, “and he’s sneaking through the bushes…He’d ask me not to take pictures. He wouldn’t want me to post them. I did not listen to him.” She says she took selfies with Trump and her husband didn't like it.
Obviously, Lynn is hungry for some publicity. But there are a few lessons from this tragic tale of marital woe.
First, two publicity-hungry people probably shouldn’t marry one another. This seems like a lesson that the Scaramuccis have also learned in the recent past. Their agendas obviously weren’t aligned — and if Mrs. Aronberg’s agenda deviated from her husband’s, she seems happy to ignore his agenda in favor of her own, and vice versa.
Second, people of different political preferences should think seriously before tying the knot. Politics often reflect deeper values, and while we’re fond of papering over those differences because of luuuuuuv, the reality of marriage requires that two people share a set of values in order to live a successful life together.
Finally, the Trump era has polarized people in a unique way. That’s because Trump himself is polarizing — he’s a loud, brash personality with a thousand character flaws that endear him to some and alienate others. People tend to see feelings about Trump as a referendum on character.
And that speaks to the problem with treating our politicians as celebrities. The point of politics is that we have certain policies and ideas we’d like to see promulgated, and politicians are a vehicle for those policies and ideas. The character of politicians matters only insofar as it speaks to the trustworthiness and capableness of the person making promises with regard to policy. But now, policy has taken a back seat to the attitude of politicians — we care more about what our politicians are like than what we’d like them to do. That means that if someone likes Trump, we tend to judge them not with regard to the policies they’d want to promote, but with regard to their approbation of Trump’s shortcomings. That's often an inaccurate and even nasty attempt to impute motives to people out of political differences.