Vice President Dick Cheney and aspiring Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama may not share a political philosophy, but they do share a family tree.
The vice president’s wife, Lynne, said during an interview with MSNBC on Tuesday that her husband and Obama were eighth cousins, a fact she discovered while researching family ancestry for her new memoir.
“This is such an amazing American story that one ancestor … could be responsible down the family lines for lives that have taken such different and varied paths as Dick’s and Barack Obama,” she said.
Ginny Justice, a spokeswoman for Mrs. Cheney, told MSNBC that Obama is a descendant of French Huguenot Mareen Duvall, whose son wed the granddaughter of the Englishman Richard Cheney in the 1600’s.
Fox News on Wednesday also cited a report last month in the Chicago Sun-Times, which indicated Obama also had a distant genealogical connection to President Bush. The two are 11th cousins, according to the paper.
