For Obama and Romney, Lunch at the White House

President Obama will have lunch with his one-time Republican rival, Mitt Romney, at the White House on Thursday, making good on an election-night pledge by the president to meet with Romney in the days ahead.

The White House announced the event in a statement released by Mr. Obama's press secretary on Wednesday.

“It will be the first opportunity they have had to visit since the election,” the statement says. “There will be no press coverage of the meeting.”

In fact, the meeting will be closely watched. The two men competed intensely against each other for the better part of a year. Mr. Romney, in private conversations with donors shortly after the election, blamed his loss in part on the president promising “gifts” to Democratic constituencies like minorities and students.

In his speech claiming victory on election night, Mr. Obama praised Mr. Romney's legacy of public service and said that he looked “for ward to sitting down with Governor Romney to talk about where we can work together to move this country forward.”

A week later, in his first post-election news conference, Mr. Obama elaborated on that promise, saying that he thought there were “certain aspects” of Mr. Romney's background that could help the country confront the fiscal challenges in the years ahead.

“I do think he did a terrific job running the Olympics,” Mr. Obama said. “And you know, that skill set of trying to figure out how do we make something work better applies to the federal government. There are a lot of ideas that I don't think are partisan ideas but are just smart ideas about how can we make the federal government more customer-friendly?”

The president added: “He presented some ideas during the course of the campaign that I actually agree with. And so it'd be interesting to talk to him about something like that.”

But it's unclear whether the lunch will lead to any long-term political partnership between the two men. Past pledges of cooperation between presidential rivals have sometimes faded amid the intense partisanship that grips Washington.

Four years ago, Senator John McCain of Arizona, who lost his presidential bid to Mr. Obama, pledged to work with the president in the weeks after the 2008 election. But Mr. McCain has become one of Mr. Obama's fiercest critics, not a bipartisan partner.