WHY did it take me so long to see something so obvious?
In Drupal 7, you can change the order in which text formats are processed. So as an Admin, you don't have to change the text format in your WYSIWYG text editor every time you use it. I didn't realize this until I watched Kevin Reynen giving his talk on Media in D7 at D4DBoston 2011. He very casually went through a D7 installation and proceeded to click on
'Configuration' --> 'Text Formats' --> click on 'Full HTML' and drag and drop it to the top of the list.
Keep in mind, Full HTML is usually only accessible to Admins (and should not be accessible to all). On my site, I have 'Filtered HTML' set up properly so that I avoid the security risk of using Full HTML.
Now, when I compose a blog post, I no longer have to worry about what the text format is and missing formatting.
Big Hurrah!