ALBANY – “I often wonder how life could have been different if we had married each other,” a mock-wistful William Weld told Senator Clinton at the Albany press corps’ annual satire show on Saturday night.

Their paths met early on in their careers, when Mr. Weld and Mrs. Clinton worked on the Watergate Committee more than 30 years ago. For a couple of hours over the weekend, they were reunited, with each giving the traditional “rebuttals” to the reporters’ musical parody.

The routines of Mr. Weld and Mrs. Clinton won hearty laughs from the audience, a who’s who of state government power players in tuxedos and gowns. The best humor always has a core of truth, and in their jokes, riffs, and insults was a telling reflection of their divergent political standing.

Mr. Weld, a former governor of Massachusetts who is struggling to make a political comeback in New York, found his richest vein of humor in himself. While appearing stiff – or some would say regal – on the campaign trail through the Empire State, Mr. Weld let his orange hair down on Saturday night with send-ups of his patrician air and morphing stances on issues.

He made a couple of light jabs at his Republican rival, John Faso, but the sharpest ones, which got the biggest laugh, were self-inflicted.

With an expertly delivered deadpan, he poked fun at his aristocratic lineage, which traces back to the 1600s. “I’m just like you,” he said. “I’m like so many New Yorkers, for I too come from a family of immigrants. We immigrate still to this state constantly between our four houses in New York.”

Mr. Weld, who was skewered by the Democratic Party after he flubbed the name of the former landfill in Staten Island by confusing Fresh Kills with Fishkill, a town and village in Dutchess County, brought a carpetbag on stage and opened his speech with a mock gaffe: “It’s always a thrill for me to be in the great state of … in this, in this great state … of New York. I knew that.”

Explaining that he wanted to perform onstage, he said, “I’m quite a tap dancer. Just ask me my position on gay marriage,” referencing the harder-line stance he has adopted from the one he took as governor of Massachusetts.

He received a joyful ovation after he sang a parody rendition of Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line.” Mr. Weld, who is trying to maximize his voter appeal by seeking the endorsement of minor parties, crooned in baritone: “My libertarian support was no joke. I say smaller government. They say everybody toke, a lady of the night for every bloke. That idea is not mine. But I want that line.”

In her second appearance at the press corps’ show, Mrs. Clinton – in excellent position to win re-election and a likely 2008 presidential contender – hurled stinging, but funny, one-liners at just about every prominent New York politician.

She joked that the most expedient way for Democrats to take over the state Senate is for the Republican majority leader, Joseph Bruno, to switch parties. After all, she said, he’s a “better Democrat than many people who call themselves Democrats these days,” mentioning Mr. Bruno’s push for more health care spending and his call for American troops in Iraq to return home.

She ridiculed John Sweeney, the U.S. representative photographed partying at a fraternity house, saying the two would meet up that night at SUNY Albany.

And she pretended to freeze during her speech, mimicking Jeanine Pirro’s most embarrassing campaign moment, when the former U.S. Senate candidate lost a page of her speech and paused for 32 seconds.

As for Mr. Weld’s trip down memory lane, she retorted: “Bill, we couldn’t have gotten married. I didn’t buy your line.”