As such, Ryan is both a product of and poster boy for the political city. And it is symptom of the corruption and divisiveness of contemporary Washington that a man who has not passed a single piece of substantive legislation, ever, can be hailed as a substantive and deep thinker and the voice of budgetary sanity while racking up an actual record consisting overwhelmingly of renaming post offices, honoring Ronald Reagan and Wisconsin, providing for the issuance of commemorative coins, and increasing the deficit through massive tax cuts. (The post office thing, of course, is not specific to Ryan -- a quarter of bills passed in 2011 involved postal branches, and the Congress passed fewer pieces of law last year than at any point since a tally began to be kept in 1947, according to Bloomberg News. And we all know the relationship between the Bush tax cuts, which President Obama and Democrats have extended, and the deficit: they added $1.7 trillion to the tab between 2001 and 2008, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.)

My theory of politics is that, from the perspective of the voter, nothing that has not been passed into law and enacted on the ground has actually taken place, no matter how much hot air it has garnered inside the Beltway. This is why politicians, like President Obama, who love to tout as yet-unimplemented programs run into trouble -- because voters are very fact-oriented in their assessments. Until something touches their lives, it hasn't happened. There is only what is, and what is not -- the rest is just noise that most people tune out, or dismiss as empty promises.

Sure, Ryan signed on to substantive tax reforms as a co-sponsor of bills that passed during Bush's first term, as well as being a co-sponsor of the second round of Bush tax cuts. But since then his proposals and those he's backed as a co-sponsor have gotten further away from the congressional mainstream, making him a force for gridlock and the sort of legislative failure that has come to characterize the 112th Congress.

Ryan joins the GOP ticket as a creature of this Congress, the one that has a 9 percent approval rating -- the lowest level of support ever recorded. He's been a rising star among the people normal Americans hate, and the fresh-faced embodiment of what Washington insiders value today.

Whatever his reputation in Georgetown, Ryan's more-than-13-year record proves he is no legislative great. No one in America has yet lived under Ryan's radical proposals for rewriting the social contract in America, because in seven different Congresses, in Houses run by Democrats and by Republicans, and under three different presidents, not one of his big ideas has gathered enough support to become law.

Ryan's first successful piece of legislation was a bill "To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 1818 Milton Avenue in Janesville, Wisconsin, as the 'Les Aspin Post Office Building.'" It became a law in 2000.