Mexico's Electoral Calendar and the DEA's Plans

In a Senate hearing today, DEA intelligence chief Anthony Placido said that the agency's goal is to deliver as many blows as possible to drug traffickers in the next two years, because the agency can't count on the next Mexican president being as supportive of cooperation with the US as Calderón has been. He also seemed to promise a final push against the most notorious narcos running wild:

At an operational tactical level, we would want to take down the cartel bosses over the next two years.

This is an odd way to explain it; if they knew that Mexico's next president wasn't going to differ significantly on drug policy, would the DEA not be as interested in arresting Chapo, et al? Also, Calderón's interest in working with the US may be tough to top, but if the next president's arrival is accompanied by stories of his toning down the security contacts with the US, that would be I believe the first such case in over a generation.