Until now. The Democratic National Committee's 10-minute videos about Bush's record as Texas governor have finally made the majority of our panel sit up and say, "Wow!" The four separate short films covering education, the environment, healthcare and the poverty stricken "colonia" border communities in Texas all earned raves. Is this video the beginning of the end of Bush's run, or a nice piece of work on Gore's behalf that will prove too little, too late?

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"Texans in their own words: Colonias"
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"Texans in their own words: Environment"
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"Texans in their own words: Education"
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"Texans in their own words: Health Care"
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Steve Sandoz is a creative director with Wieden & Kennedy, the advertising agency responsible for Nike's ad campaign.

I think these are surprisingly effective. Simply by taking W.'s own words of rhetoric and playing them against examples of him ignoring the very values and promises of his campaign, the DNC has succeeded in showing him to be just another double-talking politician.

I would, however, challenge them on a couple of points. First I don't believe all these Texas problems are solely Bush's fault. I'm certain the slums of colonia and the belching chemical stacks of Houston were there long before young George got the keys to the governor's mansion, but apparently he's done nothing to help either situation during his time in office.

But the bigger problem with these ads is that they dare to move outside the sound bite, hyperbole-driven format of everything else voters have been exposed to in this campaign. Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled to finally see someone taking a more thoughtful, intelligent approach to challenging the claims of their opponent, but in many ways these seem more like infomercials. I truly wonder if people will sit and listen to these stories from the folks who've been governed by George Bush or if they'll just click off to a "Friends" rerun.

I think the DNC has finally made [an effective video]. But is it too little, too late?

Tom Dixon is creative director and partner at Meyer & Wallis in Milwaukee.

Boy, it's times like this I really wish I were an avowed Democrat or Republican, so I could either defend or dispute the video. On one hand, it's pretty powerful material. On the other hand, it's a simple formula for creating the desired spin: testimonials from the dissatisfied. I am curious to see the response from the Republicans.

At the very least, how about a similar piece on Gore's misdirected priorities from his Tennessee days: poignant testimonials from disenfranchised moonshiners ... underpaid, over-splintered DollyWorld cloggers ... and starving, out-of-work dentists. (I'm originally from Tennessee. So I can say that kind of stuff.)

Should be an interesting final lap coming up.

Jonathan Foreman is a film critic for the New York Post and a frequent contributor to Salon.

These [videos] -- all of them a bit long and boring -- seem designed not to convince independent voters but to shore up the convictions of Democrats who may be faltering in their dedication to Al Gore. The only real exception is the "Environment" film. While the cancer-cluster claim could be tendentious, the woman being interviewed seemed like a real person with real fears. And the shots of smog over a city -- Houston? -- are pretty devastating. I did wonder, though, why no one quoted explicitly blamed the pollution on the governor's ties to the energy business.

Of course, one of the problems that has bedeviled recent Democratic political advertising is the inability of those who make the ads to imagine themselves in the world of people who aren't convinced liberals. You can see this most clearly in the "Colonias" and "Education" segments.

The first is accompanied by corny guitar music like an NPR feature and seems blissfully unaware that many voters are unlikely to be all that appalled by conditions in immigrant colonias that have sprung up on our side of the Mexican border. Even if they're particularly pro-immigrant, they may well know that Texas faces unique problems in the settlement of folks streaming across the border, and you can see from the [video] itself that the colonias are hardly the equivalent of the shantytowns on the other side of the Rio Grande ...

The "Education" short is the least effective of the four. Unlike the rest, it isn't delivered by an "ordinary person," but mostly by a schoolteacher with union banners behind her. And you get a strong sense of special-interest pleading especially when you hear a voice declaim against the use of non-accredited teachers. Many voters not only know that teachers unions have campaigned vigorously against education reforms popular with parents, they're also not terrified of the idea that retired businesspeople or students fresh out of Ivy League schools might be teaching their kids instead of a barely literate hack with an education degree.

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