WASHINGTON (AFP) — They are political polar opposites, but for Vice President Dick Cheney and Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama, hidden family ties run deep, as they are distant cousins.
The vice president’s wife Lynne Cheney told MSNBC that she had uncovered the bizarre political twist while researching her new book, a memoir of growing up in the western state of Wyoming.
“Dick and Barack Obama are eighth cousins … isn’t that an amazing thing?” Cheney said in the interview.
“If you go back eight generations they have a common ancestor,” Cheney said, adding they were both descended from a man that moved out west from Maryland.
“This is such an amazing American story that one ancestor … could be responsible down the family line for lives that have taken such different and varied paths as Dick’s and Barack Obama.”
Obama’s spokesman Bill Burton offered a tongue in cheek reply.
“Every family has its black sheep,” he told AFP.
Obama often highlights his rich multicultural family heritage on the campaign trail — his father was from Kenya and his mother was from Kansas.