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The trouble with portraying your political enemies as zombies in TV campaign ads as is that they never live up to the real thing.

Republican Rep. Heather Wilson already has done so, going negative against her opponent in the Nov. 7 election for U.S. House District 1 - Democratic N.M. Attorney General Patricia Madrid. We fully expect retaliation in kind from Madrid, whose Web site already is rife with anti-Wilson froth.

Wilson and politicians around the nation of all stripes are applying what has become a TV-ad psy-ops standard: picturing the competition using the slow-mo, black-and-white, living-dead, possessed-by-the-devil approach. The technique makes the opponent look like a zombie wannabe, but neither Madrid nor most other candidates are good - or bad - enough to be convincing. For example, Wilson's ad implies that Madrid is still able to connive and deceive, which, as everyone knows, is very un-zombielike.

The zombie motif used by Wilson and others ultimately disappoints. Politically astute viewers can't seriously believe that the zombie candidate, in real life, is as evil-incarnate as a real zombie. So the message falls flat. Zombie fans, used to much gorier fare, must find the zombie candidate far too lightweight to satisfy their twisted appetites.

So it looks as if voters will be stuck with nearly four more months of grievously bad zombie commercials that offer little political sustenance and zero entertainment value.

The solution? Serious political debate on the one hand. Naaaah - never happen. On the other, make real dead zombie commercials. Laughs. Screams. Entertainment. It's an interesting possibility.