Anyone else forget that there were other elections?

Presidential elections are fun to watch; there is no other way to put it.

You have a clear choice between two people and in November the whole thing comes to a head and the nation as a whole vote for one of them to be our leader. It’s like American Idol but with worse singers and nuclear missiles.

Unfortunately, we all tend to forget that there are numerous other elections happening at the same time across the country that are even more important. Right now, 1/3 of the Senate is up for election and the entire House of Representatives are also up.

These are the people that make the laws, set the budget, and ultimately choose how the country will work, not the president. The president is really a glorified figurehead who gets to work more on our foreign policy and try and find ways to weasel his views into policies that Congress set.

This entire election the media has sort of forgotten that more than 450 people are fighting to get or keep a job in Congress. How Congress will look after this election is just as important as who will be president. So what do the polls say?

Right now, the polls say that the new Congress will look a lot like the old Congress. The Republicans will likely keep the House and Democrats might just barely keep the Senate. Why does that matter?

Because if the past is any indicator it means that Obama is unlikely to be able to get much done with a House controlled by Republicans, because he has had serious difficulty convincing them to join him on policy.

We can also look at Romney’s past and see that he has been incredibly good at being able to get coalitions opposed to him to work with him. He did it as a governor in Massachusetts and he’s done it to some degree in getting hard-core conservatives to side with his obviously moderate beliefs.

Perhaps Romney isn’t as good in keeping his promises consistent, but his track record shows him having the ability to get things done with people who disagree with him.

Something that Obama will have a much harder time showing.