New York, Sept. 1 (Reuters): In an American presidential election where image counts more than ever before, if one candidate has a hamster story, the other one does too.

Last month in Boston, President George W. Bush’s opponent, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, showed his extended family to the assembled Democrats at his nominating convention.

Kerry’s daughter told delegates how the lanky politician once leaped into the water to rescue her drowning hamster, plucked it out and tried to resuscitate the tiny beast.

Last night, the Bush family took the stage at the Republican convention to soften the image of a man branded by opponents as a leader who took the nation unnecessarily to war. They had a hamster tale as well.

“We had a hamster too,” Bush’s daughter Barbara said. “Let’s just say ours didn’t make it.”

Like the Kerrys in Boston, Bush’s family worked together to soften the image of the President and show him as an everyday American dad at the head of a lively family.

Barbara’s twin, Jenna, who made tabloid headlines early in Bush’s White House term after being arrested for under-age drinking, joked: “We spent the last four years trying to stay out of the spotlight. Sometimes we did a little better job than others.”

With former President George Bush and his wife, Barbara, in the hall, the younger Barbara joked about her grandmother’s famous prudishness.

“She thinks Sex in the City is something married people do but never talk about,” she said, referring to the popular television show.

The Bush twins introduced their father, who spoke via a satellite video link from Pennsylvania with people playing softball behind him.

The President introduced his wife, Laura, calling her “a wonderful mother” and “a voice of calm and reason in difficult times.”

The First Lady, wearing a sky blue dress suit, countered criticisms that her husband took the nation to war in Iraq over weapons of mass destruction that were never found.

“My husband didn’t want to go to war, but he knew the safety and security of America and the world depended on it,” she told delegates at Madison Square Garden, telling them Bush agonised over the decision. Experts describe Laura Bush as a traditional First Lady.

Laura Bush peppered her speech with references to the Bush family's day-to-day life, their daughters going to college and graduating, mourning the loss of their dog Spotty and enjoying the antics of their other dog Barney.

But she shed no more light on the details of how the Bush hamster perished.