President Clinton to Meet with President Obama Friday

Fox News confirms that former President Bill Clinton will be at the White House for a meeting with President Obama Friday.

The meeting comes as Obama is facing a tough fight with his own party over a compromise he reached with Republicans on the Bush-era tax cuts.

On top of that, Obama is just a few weeks shy of dealing with a GOP-controlled House, and a Senate that is slightly more red. Obama himself called the historic GOP outcome of the midterms a "shellacking."

Clinton has been praised for his ability to handle a Republican Congress after his party was beat-out in 1994.

In fact, Obama has apparently been trying to learn from Clinton's experience. In an interview with the New York Times Magazine in October before the midterm elections, Obama said he was reading "The Clinton Tapes," by Taylor Branch. Branch's tome highlighted his secret interviews while Clinton was in office.

"I was looking over some chronicles of the Clinton years, and was reminded that in '94 -- when President Clinton's poll numbers were lower than mine, and obviously the election ended up being bad for Democrats - unemployment was only 6.6 percent. And I don't think anybody would suggest that Bill Clinton wasn't a good communicator or was somebody who couldn't connect with the American people or didn't show empathy," Obama said in the NYT interview.

The president has gone on a major offensive in trying to explain the tax deal. His base is angry that he caved in to cuts for the wealthiest Americans and Obama has had various on-camera statements, did a YouTube video through his political arm, and an interview with NPR set to air Friday. Yet even through the blanketing the media with his message, he is still facing an uphill battle with convincing his base that the deal was the best he could do to ensure middle class tax cuts.

Fox News Mike Emanuel contributed to this report.