Bush was responsible for the jailing of LaRouche, and his policy in these matters was
diametrically opposite to this approach. Bush never made a serious proposal for the
economic reconstruction of the areas included within the old USSR, and was niggardly
even in loans to let the Russians buy agricultural commodities. In November, 1990,
Gorbachov addressed a desperate plea to world governments to alleviate the USSR food
shortage, and sent Foreign Minister Shevardnadze to Washington in the following month
in hopes of obtaining a significant infusion of outright cash grants for food purchases
from US stocks. After photo opportunities with Baker in Texas and with Bush at the
White House, all Shevardnadze had to take back to Moscow was a paltry $1 billion and
change. Within a week of Shevardnadze's return, he resigned his post under fire from
critics, referring to sinister plans for a coup against Gorabchov. The coup, of course,
came the following August. It should have been obvious that Bush's policy was
maximizing the probability of ugly surprises further down the road.
Bush did not demand self-determination for the subject nationalities, but sided with the
Kremlin against the republics again and again, ignoring the January, 1991 bloodbath in
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: