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. Itwas 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, producto despatch 10 tons of broccoli, equivalent to about 80,000 servings, to the White House. Bush wasers were aroused sufficiently
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 fromoutburst. For it turns out that broccoli, along with cabbage and some other vegetables, belongs to a Basedow's disease, some observers recalled the broccoli (^)
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 returnBush'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?
At their spring summit, Bush and Gorbachov continued to disagree about whether united Germanywould be a member of NATO. Much time was spent on strategic arms, the Vienna conventional
arms reduction talks, and the other aspects of the emerging European architecture, where their
mutual counter-revolutionary committments went very deep. Both stressed that they had taken their
Malta consultations as their point of departure. Bush's hostility to the cause of Lithuania and the
other Baltic republics, now subject to crippling economic blockade by Moscow, was writ large. Thecentral exchanges of this summit were doubtless those which occurred in the bucolic isolation of
Camp David among a small shirtsleeve group that comprehended Bush, Gorbachov, Shevardnadze,
Baker, and Scowcroft. Bush was unusually closed-mouthed, but the very loquacious Gorbachov
volunteered that they had come to talk about the "planet and its flash-points" and the "regional
issues." There was the distinct impression that these talks were sweeping and futurological in theirscope. In his press conference the next day, Gorbachov had glowing praise for these restricted
secret talks: "I would like, in particular, to emphasize the importance of our dialogue at Camp
David, where we talked during the day yesterday. And this is a new phase in strengthening mutual
understanding and trust between us. We really discussed all world problems. We compared our
political perspectives, and we did that in an atmosphere of frankness, constructive atmosphere, an