Obama, Romney to meet Thursday

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WASHINGTON, Nov. 28 (UPI) -- President Obama and his Republican presidential rival Mitt Romney will meet Thursday for a private lunch, the White House said Wednesday.

The statement said Thursday is the "first opportunity they have had to visit since the election."

There will be no media coverage, the statement said.

After the Nov. 6 election, Obama said he wanted to meet with Romney to discuss ways they could work together on this nation's problems.

"There're certain aspects of Governor Romney's record and his ideas that I think could be very helpful," Obama said Nov. 14 during a news conference.

"I do think he did a terrific job running the Olympics," he said in his first news conference after being re-elected. "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, how can we make sure that ... we're consolidating programs that are duplicative ... how can we eliminate additional waste."