E-Mail This Article to a Friend Notes from inside the hall A week's worth of observations BY DAVID S. BERNSTEIN

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2004, NEW YORK -- Tonight, fond memories of Alf Landon. They've given video tributes to Ford, Reagan, and Bush the Elder; Elizabeth Dole mentioned her husband Bob; Schwarzenegger praised Nixon; Zell Miller gave props to Willkie; Eisenhower got a reference or two. They seemed to skip Goldwater.

Biggest loser of the week. Yale University. If I was a recruiter for Brown, I think I'd send every high school junior a video of Yale alum Barbara Bush and her equally vapid sister addressing the convention. She graduated??? College??? Ivy??? That's got to knock you down four or five places in the US News rankings right there.

A gay old time. Wasn't Monday night's performance by a seven-person troupe called "Broadway Voices for Bush" a little, you know, theatrical for the GOP, if you know what I mean?

Anyone? Anyone? After Rick "Bestiality" Santorum's speech on "Land of Opportunity" Wednesday, an Air America Radio host stood on the convention floor holding a sign begging for any Log Cabin Republican to come be interviewed.

Civil Rights Act? Big mistake. Elizabeth Dole proclaimed forcefully that what the Republican Party believes has not wavered since the 1950s, or indeed since Lincoln. I have not yet located the coloreds' water fountains in the Garden.

Worst analogy. A GOP "C-J" (convention jockey) interviewing Jim Kelly on the convention floor: "You led the Buffalo Bills to the Super Bowl four consecutive years. George Bush has won three elections, two for governor and one for President. How do you advise him to win his fourth?" Um, the Bills lost all of those games.

Not the real texts. By the time they go into the teleprompter, many of the speeches have changed significantly from the texts provided to the media. But it is those original texts that go on the official GOP convention web site. The "changes" are curious. For instance Clinton LeSueur, Congressional candidate from Mississippi, distinctly discussed his Lord Jesus Christ on stage during Monday's early session, but that's not in any available transcript of his speech. Romney's entire attack on John Edwards was not in the script given to the press.

Release his medical records. I don't know if this was apparent on television, but Dick Cheney's speech was a mere 23 minutes, and just about the only times he let go of his two-handed grip on the podium were when he went for sips of water from the glass tucked within it.

If you repeat it, it makes it so. The signs passed out to delegates to wave during Zell Miller's speech read "Let Freedom Reign" -- the mistaken rendering of "Let Freedom Ring" that George W. Bush jotted upon hearing the news of Iraq's liberation. Did I say mistake? No, a new coinage! Perhaps tonight they'll hold up signs about "Nucyular weapons" -- he's not mispronouncing it, he's created a new word!