Occidental College professor and Clinton administration official Derek Shearer is teaching a course on the man whose election ended his government service: President George W. Bush.
In "Topics in Foreign Policy -- The Bush Administration," Shearer's focus on Bush is highly personal -- but not in the way one might expect from a vanquished political foe. It turns out that Shearer, a former ambassador to Finland and one of Bill Clinton's dearest FOBs, as in Friends of Bill, is also a Friend of Bush. Sort of.
Shearer and Bush were Yale classmates who lived across the hall from each other as freshmen. "We weren't friends, but we were friendly," Shearer said.
Shearer saw enough of Bush at Yale and in a few meetings over the years to glimpse qualities that would later surface in his presidency, he said. In his weekly course, Shearer tries to use that knowledge to push students beyond superficial images when analyzing the president and his policies.
Shearer said that in college Bush exhibited the people skills that made him "come across as a more likable, trustworthy person" than Sen. John F. Kerry in this year's campaign. He also showed "a strong sense of what he believed to be good and bad," which Shearer thinks is evident in Bush's leadership style.
"What I try to get students to see is that he has a very clear view of the world. He is in control. The non-thinking liberal critique of him is [that] he is manipulated by neocons [in the Cabinet]," said Shearer, a professor in the interdisciplinary diplomacy and world affairs program.
Such comments may be surprising from someone who was a target of heavy conservative criticism when he was appointed by President Clinton to a top Commerce Department post and later as an ambassador. Shearer was described on the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal as "miles to the left of the Democratic mainstream."
A professor at Occidental since 1981, Shearer took leave from the campus to serve in the Clinton administration. He also had been a key figure in what both critics and friends recalled as the "People's Republic of Santa Monica," when that city was renowned for its liberal policies. His ex-wife, Ruth Goldway, was mayor of Santa Monica in the 1980s; he was a planning commissioner.
But now, his teaching approach wins praise from students across the political spectrum. Several of the 32 students in Shearer's class are Bush-backing Republicans who say that Shearer is evenhanded in his discussions about the current president.
