This may well be the most effective campaign ad I’ve yet seen in this cycle. Len Britton, facing an uphill battle to unseat Senator Pat Leahy in Vermont, offers one of the most concise and visual explanations of debt and its impact on future generations you’ll ever see. CBS News highlighted the ad earlier this week:

Then a man who is sitting in the raft with the kids (and, for some reason, is holding an umbrella) tells another man next to the raft to “hit them with the stimulus,” at which point the second man dumps more water into the boat.

The water, as you might have guessed, is a metaphor for the national debt. After the “stimulus” water is added, one of the kids says to man in the raft, “hey mister, you’re going to sink this boat.”

He responds with a smirk: “Better bail faster, Billy!”

Cue Britton: “Out of control spending is sinking our economy and mortgaging our children’s future. Help me throw our kids a lifeline.”

Memo to GOP candidates: skip the demon sheep and sign up Billy for some bailing. Britton may not have much of a shot of giving Leahy the boot in liberal Vermont, which sent an avowed socialist to the US Senate a few years ago, but this kind of visualization is too good to just let slip under the radar. It may even help Britton close the 35-point gap he faces in Vermont, but it will certainly let other Republican challengers in House and Senate races make the midterm stakes clear.