I am writing on the eve of a presidential election in which both candidates and their voters agree on nothing and accuse each other of wanting to destroy the country. Something tells me the results will not satisfy everyone. Whoever wins, half the country will panic. But, the losing side can retain their sanity, or what little of it remains, if they remember that more than the presidency is at stake.  

Every presidential year, we forget about the legislative branch of government and believe in the myth — pushed, as a rule, by both parties — that all the country’s problems will go away if candidate X is elected president. To the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate races, at least those beyond our states, we pay no attention. It is a curious habit.  

We complain about the circus on Capitol Hill, decrying congressmen as incompetent buffoons. We address their performance in midterm elections and continue to scrutinize them. Yet, the moment an election year comes around, we shift our fears and anxieties onto one big race, expecting salvation from one candidate and doom from the other.  

We pretend a president can solve the day’s biggest issues without U.S. Congress. Any definitive policies on gun control, immigration or the national debt require months of congressional negotiating, logrolling, screaming, filibustering, arguing, rewriting of statutes and who knows what else. We adopt this illusion of presidential power because it seems to simplify the convoluted process of policymaking, to reduce the clamor on Capitol Hill to the dictates of the president’s pen.  

Like all things in our politics, this tendency has intensified in recent years. The more extreme the country becomes, the more we look for saviors in the form of presidential candidates. This year, the common voter has no secondary concerns. It all depends on Vice President Kamala Harris or President-elect Donald Trump.  

The House and Senate races may as well be the village post office election. I am convinced most voters would readily trade complete control of Congress — all 100 seats in the Senate, and 435 in the House—to the opposing party in exchange for the triumph of their presidential candidate.  

The Founding Fathers did not want us to view elections this way. They would have thought it preposterous for us to disregard Congress — to which they gave the power to make and pass laws, levy taxes, raise an army, declare war and regulate trade — because we are so worried about the president, who can be ousted by a few congressmen.   

The Founders wanted the legislature to tower over the executive. They wanted us to lose sleep over who controls Congress, not the White House. We have learned to defy their wishes, even though the U.S. Constitution, 27 Amendments later, remains partial to the legislative branch. But still, we seek salvation in the commander in chief.