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Wow. That works like a charm. Thanks very much.

You mention that there are better solutions. What makes this worse? Are there situations in which I should not use it?

Thanks again.

OK, the following macro will simultaneously embolded (?) text and math
\newcommand{\allbold}[1]{\textbf{$\boldsymbol{#1}$}}

So it will work on macros like the following that contain both
\newcommand{\mac}{\ensuremath{\bar{\text{A}}^{2}}}

Now, the real question is how do you avoid this altogether ...

Thanks for your reply. I see a couple of problems though:
1) This isn't that much better that adding \mathbf{} to everything, which is what I'm trying to avoid.
2) $\text{A_B}$ doesn't work, but $\text{A}_\text{B}$ does. In fact it works really well -- \text{} takes the font/weight of the ...

I need to use math mode in chapter and section headings. e.g.:
\chapter{Quadratic: $x^2$}
\section{The properties of $\mathrm{A_B}$}

Unfortunately these math commands are typeset with the normal font weight rather than bold, as titles should be. The result looks incongruous. For these simple ...