OK, I recently confessed to a friend. Maybe I AM just a tad cranky these days. But it’s only because I haven’t slept a full night in more than five years. Sleep aids, home remedies and even new mattresses have failed to do the trick. This friend who knows me – and my politics – well insists the culprit is none other than my deep-rooted ancient Scottish sense of patriotism, which, he only half-jokingly suggests, may at last be assuaged once a new president takes office Jan. 20. Here’s why I’m beginning to believe he may be right…

In the final weeks preceding every presidential election, the media drive the American electorate into extreme fits of either boredom or anxiety, depending on one’s level of engagement in the electoral process, by hopelessly obsessing over polls and a mysterious segment of voters that — it turns out — may barely even exist at all. Entire truck caravans laden with barrels of ink — and their present-day electronic equivalent — are devoted each election cycle to analyzing the thoughts, attitudes and leanings of the “undecided” voter.