bush didn't have anything to do with the bad economy, but alot of what he is doing is to turn the economy around. War is always an economy boost, WWII is what brought the U.S. out of the deppression. If he plays himself as a war hero, and turns around the economy then he will be re-elected easily, clinton wasn't doing anything great but because the economy was doing good he was easily re-elected over Dole, even though George Bush Sr. had become quite popular in the US after the war with Iraq, the US had gone into a small recession before the election, so they voted Clinton in.
as for the infamous election, my problem is not with bush it is with our election process. The elctoral colege makes a mockery of the democratic ideals that our country was founded upon. It was created for two reasons, some of the government people at the time did not trust the common man to make the right vote, It was also institued to preserve the institution of slave labor. The norther states were filled with abolitionists, and the voting population in the north was 3 or 4 times that of the voting population of that in the south, but because of the electoral college 15 southern slave owners votes counted as much as 150 norther abolitionists. I view it as an antiqauted, morckery of the patriotic Ideals of our country. I wont say that bush wouldn't have won anyway he very well could have, in my state alot of people don't vote because their votes don't matter, the last time the utah electoral votes didn't go to the republican candidate was in the 50s, If we had a direct vote election then people would have known that their votes counted and then alot more people would have went out to vote out and vote on all sides. It is kind of crazy that the last presidential elections had record turnout of voters, but we were still only at like 46% of the population voting, so even though gore won the popular vote he really only had like 24% of the total populations vote, it is worse that George Bush was elected president with only 23% of the nations vote, However many presidents have been elected on far less.
as for the United states, the only human rights that the us government is concerned about are the rights of its own citizens, you have to take a more global approach to human rights to be truly justified as a moral government, not that one actually exists. The us gov supports the sudi arabian monarchy who oppress their own people to gain finacial wealth because the us needs their oil. In Iran we supported the Sha of Iran, A facist dictator who grew wealthy on the suffering of his people because he was at war with Iraq, and Iraq was allied with the soviet union, so we supported him just because Iraq was allied with the soviet union. The US doesn't really care about the human rights of other countries, oh sure they put on the facade that they care, but just this week the us released more of the Nixon tapes, that contradict his public statments that he only wanted to attack military targets in vietnam, when nixon was discussing escalating the war effort
"I'd rather use the nuclear bomb,"
"We want to decimate that g0ddamned place." "North Vietnam is going to get reordered. ... It's about time, it's what should have been done long ago."