For my money, there’s only one possibility for this award. It’s Ron Paul.

Paul has, without question, had a better year than anyone could ever have expected. He’s raised a bunch of money. He has a bunch of aggressive, well-organized supporters online.

And he’s not going to be a factor when actual votes are cast.

Even if he chooses to take his war chest and run as an Independent, he’ll be an asterisk in the fall campaign and won’t have any impact in the electoral college.

Bottom line: Ron Paul has been this year’s most interesting political sideshow, but as an actual candidate, he has had minimal impact. That makes him this year’s most overrated figure.

Jim: RONPAUL! RONPAUL! RONPAUL! (I just figured someone should say that on behalf of the blimp financiers.)

I’m going to name New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Cam and Marshall can categorize his nanny state initiatives in a list probably as long as War and Peace, but for the life of me I can’t quite get why Bloomberg is being treated - nay, the media is begging him to run for president.

He won both of his mayoral campaigns by outspending his rivals. In 2001, he spent $73 million — outspending his Democratic rival by 5 to 1! — and still only won by 2 percent. He won a blowout in 2005, but only after spending another $66 million. Of course, I can see why a campaign operative hoping to be hired by Bloomberg (COUGHedrollinsCOUGH) would hope for him to run.

He’s by no means a bad manager of the city, but he’s being touted as a greater reformer than Giuliani, which just doesn’t wash. It’s a hell of a lot easier to create the New York City of late 2007 from the 2001 than to create the city of 2001 from where it was in 1993. The heavy lifting had been done; crime had dropped dramatically, the subways were cleared of graffiti, the city had enjoyed a great deal of economic growth, and Al Sharpton had decided to take a break from encouraging arson to focus on national politics.

Mike Bloomberg is an extremely rich man, who can afford to be fairly blunt — see his comments about diet guru Robert Atkins’ death - who knows how to schmooze the media, and who has taken care of New York’s various power bases and political constituencies. As a result of this, he is one of the most relentlessly revered figures in U.S. politics, in a manner wildly disproportionate to his actual accomplishments.

Cam: I’m with Jim when it comes to Bloomberg, but I think I have to venture out into the world of pop culture for this one.

J.K. Rowling is the most overrated figure of the year. Having now read all seven of the Harry Potter books, they were good but not great. And the payoff for these years of reading is what? Harry had a neat adventure as a kid and grew up to be… a bureaucrat. Talk about a bummer of an ending.

Marshall: Runners-up include Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, George Mitchell, and Reggie Bush.