By MARY ANN POUST

The Al Smith Dinner may have been the liveliest show in New York last Thursday, as presidential candidates George W. Bush and Al Gore donned white tie and took turns poking fun at themselves and each other in speeches that at times had the audience, and Archbishop Egan, in stitches.

The archbishop, as host of the annual charity event at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, assured the contenders they are "in our prayers" as they seek the nation's highest office, and he added a bit of advice: "Whoever is writing your material, don't lose him."

The Oct. 19 dinner, which benefits Catholic health care services in the archdiocese, had its serious moments as well, when the archbishop spoke movingly of the four pediatric nurses from St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan killed in a Virginia Beach car accident last month, calling them "angels" in Catholic health care.

The city mourned them, he said, because they "protected the weakest, the most fragile, the most defenseless among us."

He reminded his listeners, too, of the dinner's main purpose: "to raise money for angelic works in our Catholic hospitals and in our Catholic health care institutions." And he described various efforts that will be kept afloat thanks to the $1.6 million raised by the dinner.

Among them were a program to care for the frail elderly, "whom an uncaring society might wish to eliminate, ever so gently"; a program to care for AIDS victims, "whom an uncaring society might wish simply to ignore"; a program to care for unwed teenage mothers, "whom an uncaring society might wish to leave to their own devices"; and a program to care for children in the womb, "to whom an uncaring society might wish to deny even the right to live."

Texas Gov. Bush paid tribute to Cardinal O'Connor, calling the late prelate "a moral leader" for everyone, not just Catholics.

"He took a high office and lifted it," Bush said. "For anyone who aspires to leadership, he's a model." He said the cardinal was known for "both his conviction and his kindness, fidelity and forgiveness in equal measure."

"Cardinal O'Connor defied all the labels and showed us that the truth is sometimes larger than left and right...The cardinal had a way of putting politicians on the spot, where we belong," Bush said.

The dinner's health care honoree was Dr. Michael J. Brescia, a co-founder and executive medical director of Calvary Hospital for the terminally ill in the Bronx.

Tickets to the 55th annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in the Waldorf's Grand Ballroom sold out quickly, even with an $800 price tag, and extra tables were added to accommodate more people. The 1,300 who attended dined on foie gras in port wine sauce and roast veal, and got a chance to see candidates in the country's two hottest political races seated on the same dais--but not side by side.

Besides Bush and Vice President Gore, who sat on either side of Archbishop Egan, the five-level dais included U.S. Senate candidates Rick A. Lazio and his Democratic opponent Hillary Rodham Clinton. Running neck-and-neck in the latest polls, they sat on opposite sides of the second level.

It was the first time in a dozen years that the two major candidates for president addressed the Al Smith Dinner, which traditionally attracts the state's major politicians.

Alfred E. Smith IV, the dinner chairman and great-grandson of the former governor and presidential candidate, set the tone for the Gore-Bush banter in his remarks introducing them. The dinner, he said, succeeded in bringing together "two men whose basic philosophies are at loggerheads," then paused for a minute before the punch line, "Governor Pataki and Mayor Giuliani."

Smith joked that "we've asked the candidates to speak one at a time" to avoid any confusion with the presidential debates. Gore was criticized in the first debate for interrupting his opponent.

The vice president, who spoke first, started right off making fun of his tendency to exaggerate and his boast that he invented the Internet. "The Al Smith Dinner represents a hallowed and important tradition, which I actually did invent," he deadpanned.

Joking about his oft-repeated debate promise to keep Social Security in a "locked box," he said if he's elected he'll put "Medicare in a walk-in closet," NASA funding in a "hermetically sealed Ziploc bag" and will "always keep lettuce in the crisper."

Bush, whose proposals have been criticized by opponents as benefits for a small percentage of the rich, said as his opening remark he was glad to join those on the "distinguished dais, better known as the top one percent."

"This is an impressive crowd of the haves and have mores," he said. "Some people call you the elite, I call you my base."

He also made light of his reputation as a non-intellectual perennial frat-boy, saying he noticed that fellow Yale man William F. Buckley Jr., the author, was on the dais. "We have a lot in common," he said. "Bill wrote a book at Yale, I read one. He started the Conservative Party, I started a few parties myself."

The next morning, Bush met privately for 45 minutes with Archbishop Egan at the archbishop's residence before resuming his campaign in New Hampshire and Maine.