Politics & Power Quote by Al D'Amato

Al D'Amato’s line is a tidy piece of political aikido: concede just enough outrage to look tough, then use that momentum to shove the larger allegation out of bounds. “If they’ve overcharged they should be whacked and whacked good” is performative street talk, a prosecutor’s bark dressed up in populist rhythm. The repetition of “whacked” doesn’t clarify policy; it signals posture. He’s borrowing the language of punishment to reassure voters that someone, somewhere, will get hit.

Then comes the pivot: “but the idea…” He draws a bright line between corporate misconduct (safe to condemn) and political culpability (dangerous to entertain). “Somehow is involved” is doing quiet work, shrinking a potentially complex web of influence into a cartoonish conspiracy. He invites the listener to hear the charge as vague, gossipy, unserious. The question isn’t whether Halliburton benefited from proximity to power; it’s whether you’re the kind of person who believes “nonsense.”

The context matters: Halliburton and Dick Cheney were an obvious headline marriage in the early Iraq War era, when wartime contracting looked less like bureaucratic procedure and more like a patronage system with a dress code. D’Amato’s intent is to firewall Cheney while keeping a populist stance against corporate rip-offs. The subtext is Washington’s preferred compromise: punish the excesses, preserve the architecture. Accountability becomes a theatrical slap, not a structural investigation.