President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Speaker of the House John Boehner have added a fourth to their golf game next weekend.
The Columbus Dispatch reports Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich will join the game next Saturday, to be held at an undisclosed location. Kasich was invited by the Speaker, also from Ohio.
As if there wasn’t enough potential for awkwardness before (Boehner and Obama aren’t exactly known for being chummy), adding Kasich to the game could create even more tension. In April, the president criticized new laws that halted collective-bargaining rights for public employees in the state, and Kasich responded fiercely. “The President of the United States has, I think a $13 trillion debt. Why doesn’t he do his job?”
Kasich then said, “When he gets our budget balanced and starts to prepare a future for our children, maybe he can have an opinion on what’s going on in Ohio.”
Despite the differences in politics among the four, Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols insisted that the governor was “not going for political discussions. He’s going for a round of golf.”
A White House spokesman said the same thing a few weeks ago, telling reporters the game was more of a social outing than a political meeting, though many Americans were probably hoping for the president and the Speaker to iron out some of their differences.