The U.S. presidential nomination race could get a lot more interesting if some of the candidates' famous relatives decide to loan their star power to their campaigns.
A new report from the New England Historic Genealogical Society has turned up some fascinating connections. It turns out Barack Obama, for example, is a distant cousin to Brad Pitt.
And his opponent for the Democratic nomination, former first lady Hillary Clinton, is a relative of Angelina Jolie, Pitt's girlfriend.
The Republican candidate John McCain, meanwhile, is a sixth cousin to First Lady Laura Bush, the study finds.
Though there is no word on whether Pitt and Jolie plan to begin stumping for their competing relatives any time soon, the study shows just how interconnected the three candidates' family trees are.
The limbs of Clinton's family tree even stretch to Canada and to the U.K., according to the study from the non-profit organization in Boston.
It turns out the woman attempting to become the first female president of the United States can count among her relations Alanis Morissette, Celine Dion and former prime minister Pierre Trudeau. Madonna and "On the Road" author Jack Kerouac are also counted among her relatives.
"It is common to find people of French Canadian descent to be related to large numbers of other French Canadians, including these notables," said NEHGS genealogist Christopher Child in a news release.
Clinton is also related to Camilla Parker-Bowles, who is married to Prince Charles.
Obama doesn't have high profile genealogical connections to Canada, but is distant cousins with at least six other former U.S. presidents, including President George W. Bush and his father, Gerald Ford, Lyndon Johnson, Harry Truman and James Madison.
Obama, who has a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya, is also related to Robert E. Lee, who was a general during the Civil War.
His lineage also stretches across the Atlantic, where he can count former Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill as a cousin, though most of the ancestry from Obama's mother's side is from the southern and mid-Atlantic states, Child said.
At a time when both the Obama and Clinton teams are desperate to highlight differences between the two candidates, and signs of bitterness are beginning to emerge in the months-long campaign, Child said the study could give the candidates, and voters, something to smile about.
