George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

Lithuania, or winning himself the title of "chicken Kiev" during a July, 1991 trip to the
Ukraine in which he told that republic's Supreme Soviet to avoid the pitfalls of "suicidal"
nationalism. Even though the Soviet missle park was largely intact, Bush was compelled
by his budget penury to take down significant areas of US military capacities. And
finally, his stubborn refusal to throw the bankrupt policies of the Reagan-Bush years
overboard guaranteed further US economic collapse.
But Bush was mindful neither of war avoidance nor economic recovery. In the months
after Panama, he basked in the afterglow of a dramatic increase in his poularity, as
reflected by the public opinion polls. A full-scale state visit by Gorbachov was scheduled
for late May. Rumblings were being heard in the Middle East. But, in early April, Bush's
mind was focussed on other matters. It was now that he made his famous remarks on the
subject of broccoli. The issue surfaced when the White House decreed that henceforth, by
order of the president himself, broccoli would no longer be served to Bush. Reporters
determined to use the next available photo opportunity to ask what this was all about.
Bush's infantile anti-broccoli outburst came in the context of a White House State Dinner
held in honor of the visiting Polish Prime Minister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki. Although Bush
was obsessed with broccoli, he did make some attempt to relate his new obsession to the
social context in which he found himself:
Just as Poland had a rebellion against totalitarianism, I am rebelling against broccoli, and
I refuse to give ground. I do not like broccoli, and I haven't liked it since I was a little kid
and my mother made me eat it. And I'm President of the United States, and I'm not going
to eat any more broccoli.
Out in California, where broccoli is big business as a cash crop, producers were aroused
sufficiently to despatch 10 tons of broccoli, equivalent to about 80,000 servings, to the
White House. Bush was still adamant:
Barbara loves broccoli. She's tried to make me eat it. She eats it all the time herself. So
she can go out and meet the caravan. [fn 12]
These statements were an illumination in themselves, since the internal evidence pointed
conclusively to a choleric infantile tantrum being experienced by the president. But what
could have occasioned an outburst on broccoli, of all things? Slightly more than a year
later, when it became known that Bush was suffering from Basedow's disease, some
observers recalled the broccoli outburst. For it turns out that broccoli, along with cabbage
and some other vegetables, belongs to a category of foods called goitrogens. Some
schools of medicine recommend frequent servings of broccoli in order to help cool off an
overactive thyroid. [fn 13] There was much speculation that Bush's hyperthyroid
syndrome had been diagnosed by March-April, or perhaps earlier, and that broccoli had
been appearing more often on the White House menu as part of a therapy to return Bush's
thyroid and metabolism to more normal functioning. Was the celebrated thyroid outburst
a case of an irascible president, in the grip of psychopathological symptoms his
physicians were attempting to treat, rebelling against his doctors' orders?