His second effort has a tough act to follow. The first, a sendup of the MasterCard "Priceless" ad campaign, earned the candidate raves, a lawsuit and tons of free publicity. The latest Nader commercial uses a similar tactic, taking off on a popular ad, starring a lineup of woeful youths, run by Monster.com. But this time, according to Salon's political ad panel, the ad gets mixed results.

Ralph Nader, "Grow Up"

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Richard Blow is the former executive editor of George magazine and is working on a book about John F. Kennedy Jr.

I love this ad. Since it's a takeoff on the Monster.com spot, I suspect this means that the ad is targeted to tech-generation voters in California, Washington and Oregon, where Nader has his greatest support. Young voters who felt an affinity for the earlier spot might well feel the same emotional connection to this one, and a vote for Nader is clearly an emotional vote, not a practical one.

Filmed in black and white, the ad posits a stark choice between disillusionment and idealism. We all know that kids have spot-on bullshit detectors, and these youngsters, their faces giving away no hint of mischief, slyly suggest that Al Gore and George W. are equally full of shit. (Children can also get away with saying things that adults can't.) These kids remind us that our presidents should be talking about larger things than the importance of literacy or prescription drugs for seniors; they should inspire. Their words tap into Americans' latent idealism and humanity's biological compulsion to leave the world better for our children than it was for us. Not bad for a 30-second spot.

Now, would it get me to vote for Nader (who is almost an afterthought here)? Not if I weren't leaning toward him in the first place. But if I were, would it keep me from defecting out of a last-minute pragmatism? Yeah, it probably would. And that's the mark of a good ad; it knows what it's trying to do and, on those terms, it succeeds.

Scott Banda is a creative director at J. Walter Thompson in San Francisco.

Nader is blatantly stealing (for the second time -- the first time was MasterCard), and his promise is really no different from the other guys': "It'll be a better world with me in charge." Nader might have better taste in advertising, but if he is willing to steal from companies, who else could he steal from?

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