Ted Cruz knows as well as any of the 100 men and women who work in the U.S. Senate that politicians don’t operate in a vacuum.

The freshman Republican from Texas wants to become president. Were he to stroll into the Oval Office next January, he’ll have a serious issue to resolve.

How is he going to work with the individuals who seem to despise him?

Cruz stands alone in the Senate among those who think highly of him. Or so it appears.

As they say: The president proposes but Congress disposes. The Senate comprises half of the Capitol Building. The overwhelming consensus so far in this presidential campaign has been that Cruz — elected to the Senate in 2012 — has precious few friends and political allies in that body.

So the question persists on my mind: How does this guy expect to get a single thing done while working with a legislative body comprising individuals who can’t stand him?

Presidents don’t work in a vacuum. The most successful of them know how to legislate, know that to get anything done requires them to compromise.

Cruz keeps yapping about never yielding to the other side, never cutting deals, never forsaking his strong conservative principles.

I take that to mean that it’s going to be his way or the highway.

Strange. Isn’t that what Republicans have been saying about President Barack Obama?