WASHINGTON — Paul Ryan was in a Fairfield Inn in coastal North Carolina last Friday night, eating takeout food from Applebee’s in one of his last meals as an unknown to most Americans. Within hours, the Wisconsin congressman would undergo one of the oddest, headiest, and most dramatic transformations in politics: becoming a vice presidential nominee.

Suddenly, this budget and policy wonk is springboarding to national prominence with everything — from his 99-page budget plan to the crease in his trousers — under a microscope. He now has an airplane at his disposal, a group of Secret Service agents by his side, and, as it turns out, an electorate not always curious about his baseline budget figures: The day after Mitt Romney announced the fitness buff as his new running mate, the second top search term for “Paul Ryan” on Google was “shirtless” (the fourth was the policy term he’s known for: “budget”).