Obama and Boehner Will Golf Together

President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, will hold a different kind of bipartisan meeting when they go golfing together June 18th. Both the White House and speaker's office confirm the two will pair up for the round.

Boehner is well known as an avid golfer, and Obama has played nearly 70 rounds as president.

The pair was together Wednesday when the Republican Conference met with the president at the White House to discuss spending, the national deficit and the debt ceiling. Both Obama and Boehner have suggested they want to hammer out a 2012 budget soon, but they have very different ideas on what constitutes a compromise.

Additionally, the two have sparred from afar over issues ranging from health care to Libya. It remains to be seen whether this golf outing will be the key to bipartisan harmony.

While neither the White House nor the speaker's office announced where the two would play (or whether they will tee off from the red or blue tee box), their round might not be the most watched in Washington that day. The third round of the U.S. Open, one of the world's most watched golf tournaments, will be taking place at Congressional Country Club in the D.C. suburbs at the same time.

Boehner has been Obama's most prominent political opponent of his presidency, from the early battles over Obama's stimulus plan and health care overhaul to the ongoing debates over the federal debt and budget fixes. And just Friday, Boehner won House approval for his measure taking Obama to task for failing to seek congressional approval for the military mission in Libya.

But the two Democratic and Republican leaders certainly haven't kept their distance either, facing off in numerous closed-door meetings, most recently on Wednesday, when the Republican caucus met with Obama at the White House regarding negotiations to raise the debt ceiling.

A golf outing offers a much less intense setting for talks between the two political adversaries, who also both are known for their smoking habits, though Obama has said he has given up cigarettes since moving into the White House.