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Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama walked into the White House nearly six years ago with a robust Senate majority and a promise to change politics.

Now, he's heading into his final years of office estranged from Democrats in the minority on Capitol Hill, facing Republicans uninterested in making big compromises and a public that has largely moved on from the heady early days of the administration.

Obama is "anxious to get back to work" and put the midterms behind him, according to a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, adding the president regards the final two years of his term as a "fourth quarter" with the potential for real action.

He is scheduled to address the midterm results on Wednesday afternoon, just as he did in 2010 when he labeled the Republican takeover the House a "shellacking." The White House invited bipartisan congressional leaders for a meeting on Friday afternoon to map out the lawmaking terrain for the next two years.

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And administration aides are bullish about extending their strategy of going ahead with executive actions in areas where congressional cooperation appears impossible.

But for Obama, the time for major legislative moves that would build his legacy could be short. With the midterms out of the way, the attentions of both parties will soon shift to the 2016 presidential campaign, leaving little appetite for bipartisan agreement. Achieving any legislative deals will require a level of compromise the White House hasn't yet been open to; it will also depend on a fractured Republican Party's willingness to pass measures that have any hope of getting the president's signature.

In public, both sides say they're ready to find common ground --"We're ready to compromise," Vice President Joe Biden told CNN Monday -- though aides are more pessimistic in private.

Asked whether the president will be looking to compromise and take a more conciliatory tone with a GOP Senate, a White House official said the "better question is whether the GOP wants to work with us."

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Obama alone after midterm repudiation