Here's my thoughts on why Bruce was a good guy and why I don't see the Project's end goal as just rebuilding the USA in the mold of the constitution.
Bruce was definitely one of the good guys, he cared enough about the entire human race that he set up a Project to preserve the human race from extinction in a nuclear war he knew was coming. If he had been uncaring, he could have just used the Project to save himself and his family & friends. If he'd been a real bastard, he would have just saved himself and his most trusted allies.
He might be seen as callous or uncaring because it can be argued that he can travel to the future so he can obviously see what's going to happen so why doesn't he stop it? I think there's a few reasons that can be given for this.
1. He might not be able to stop it no matter what he tries, fate has been determined already and no man can change it.
2. He might be able to change things but believes he should not because that could alter too many things and just make the problem worse. He doesn't know the outcome unless he constantly travels back and forth from the future and if he does do that, he might just makes things more complicated and therefore much worse.
3. He realizes that the Project is not going to wake up 3-5 years after the war, instead they will wake up 150 years after. However, having seen this, he has also seen that 150 years later is when the Project will really be needed the most because the world hasn't recovered well enough in over 100 years. He has to accept some deaths and misfortunes because the Project is actually needed further into the future and not just 5 years after the war ends.
However, if he tells people that this is what's going to happen, they will probably doubt they can pull it off, they'll believe that some of them will die in the process because technology isn't good enough to ensure they all survive. So he tells them they will wake up around 3-5 years after the war so they can save the USA so that they can save humanity. And they will, but they will do it when humanity is getting close to the point where they really, really need the help.
(Personally I feel this is the most likely reason)
The goal of the Project stated in the 3rd edition, is the continued survival of the human race beyond the point of destruction. With this in mind I do not see the rebuilding of the USA in whatever model of government as being the end goal of the Project. It's simply a stepping stone to the main goal which is the preservation of the human race.
Why even try to rebuild the USA? Because an industrial nation has the best chance of supplying the needs of a civilization so that it can not just survive but also thrive and therefore be able to help other civilizations.The USA is arguably the best placed modern, industrialized nation to ensure the survival of the human race. Once it's back on it's feet, it can start to rebuild the rest of the world.
Unfortunately, nations that are heavily industrialized are also the most vulnerable to calamity because for example, if the electricity stops, nobody remembers how to make candles and there's not enough firewood for cooking and heating anymore and none of the factories work so there goes any new clothes or cars or fuel pumps, spare parts for the radios, medicines etc. etc.
This is why the Project becomes so important. Bruce knows that the government couldn't get the USA back on it's feet, even 50 years later the people are still struggling and 150 years later they're so spread out and in such small numbers, there's no certainty the human race will be strong enough to survive any further problems (say like the Plague making a comeback).
This is were the Project comes in. They have skills and resources that can strengthen local communities. They have the knowledge of what the world used to be like and how it can be like that again. They have the ability to reunite the scattered survivors of the USA and rebuild the nation. Once the USA is again a vibrant civilization able to furnish resources in excess of what it needs to survive, those surplus resources can be sent to other parts of the world to ensure that the human race lives on elsewhere thereby ensuring that should another calamity affect the human race, they won't all be wiped out because they are all in the one place, (all the eggs are not in the one basket so to speak).
It's been mentioned that the game was designed during the Cold War and perhaps the Project was written up as fearing that the Soviets may still be in a position to cause grief for the US. I don't agree with this theory because I think Bruce would have been able to see if this was so in his trips to the future. I think Bruce realized that the best chance of saving humanity was to rebuild the USA, the best nation to be able to do this because of the reasons I mentioned above. The world definitely needs saving because after all, if the US could not get back on it's feet 150 years after the war, what chance does the rest of the world have?
It's necessary to preserve enough people with the skills, knowledge and ideals from before the war so that 150 years later they can set about building up a society that has the skills and resources to save the human race from dying off. I think Bruce saw this as the real problem of the entire war, that the results were so devastating that even 150 years later the world still hadn't properly recovered. This is when the Project is really needed, not one or two or even 5-10 years after the war.
The USA is the best nation to rebuild the world and save the human race and this is the most noble of goals. Rebuilding the USA in the mold of the constitution would certainly help but it can't be just the end goal, but it's a damned good way of reaching the real end goal, that is, to ensure the survival of the entire planet.
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