In russia things certainly go that way. But in america those coalitions are less stable because there are too many people with money and power with too many wishes for such coalitions to be stable enough.

It is likely that the right wing faction amongst the republicans deliberately let John mc Cain win, knowing another republican right wing dude with another war agenda would not be the most popular thing at this time. Speculations like this have been going around about clintons second election as well; the intermission between bushI and bushII had to be large enough for W to make a chance.

What i'm trying to say is; there is a lot of secret dealmaking going on, but not to the extent that everything to come is fixed already.

If obama will have some successes in his economic policy, he is less likely to need the republicans, so then his agenda will be more liberal. But it's more likely that he will need the republicans in order to pull off a succesfull economic policy and that therefore he will have to give them something.

It could be that the DEA position depends on how succesfull he will be economically.