But the alliance between Money and Main Street is so uneasy, and it so often takes the form of Money basically blackmailing Main Street like they did in 1980: Put our guy Bush on the bottom of the ticket and give him all kinds of patronage nod and White House staff jobs (so we can control your calendar), or we'll do what we did for Barry in '64: stiff you on political money and give the big papers lots of negative quotes to work with while they ride your guy down.
But Old Money's wisdom is checked in at the door of government while it seeks gov't for a competitive edge or favorable market conditions. Big business is a huge political problem because it exacerbates and encourages big government, America’s greatest political threat. However, the push Old Money and Big Business gives to Big Government would be stopped at the 10th Amendment of the Constitution. The key is integrity especially in government. (HA!) Business just goes where the profits and competitive edge are.
The leverage in the nasty relationship between Big Business and government is that government is limited by the Constitution. Business then would have to look elsewhere (where they should) for their competitive edge. The answer is never regulating business and the free market but forcing politicians to abide by the Constitution. Otherwise we have a commensurate bigger and more threatening government.