WASHINGTON - Sen. Edward M. Kennedy plans to spend today fighting as hard as he can to defeat President Bush's nominee for attorney general. But tonight he's going to the movies at the White House as the Bush charm campaign enters a new arena.
Mixing politics and popcorn, the president invited the Massachusetts Democrat; his son, Patrick, a Democratic congressman from Rhode Island; and the senator's niece, Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, to a screening of the new movie "Thirteen Days."
The film is based on insider accounts of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and features Kennedy's brothers, President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, working with top White House aides to shape their strategy in the nuclear showdown with the Soviets.
Bush chose the film for his first movie night in the White House and "thought it would be a fitting tribute to the Kennedy family to invite them over to watch it," said Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary.
Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, daughter of the late president, and her husband, Edwin, also have been invited to the screening along with some friends of Bush.
Dress is casual; the menu is hot dogs and hamburgers.
The invitations went out early this week, long after Kennedy's opposition to Bush's attorney general nominee, John Ashcroft, was known.
The gesture was interpreted on Capitol Hill as a signal that Bush is making good on his promise to try to build personal relationships - even with philosophical opponents - in hopes of finding some common ground.
"It was a generous invitation and Senator Kennedy appreciates it," a Kennedy spokesman said.
