Lynne Cheney said Tuesday that her husband, Vice President Dick Cheney, is a distant cousin of his political polar opposite: Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama.
Cheney said she made the surprising discovery that her 66-year-old Republican husband and Obama, 46, are eighth cousins while she was doing family research for a book about her experiences growing up in Wyoming.
The vice president’s wife said she traced a common ancestor of the two men to a 17th century immigrant from France.
She described it as “an amazing American story that one ancestor … could be responsible down the family line for lives that have taken such different and varied paths,” according to an interview with MSNBC television.
 