You're still buying the false premise they're feeding you.
"Republicans are stupid and unqualified" is piped into our cultural Muzak circuit so often that people don't even question the idea any more. Your premise on Bush was fed to us, too, and from the same sources.
Anybody who was in the Republican primary, anyone you can imagine or hope for, would have gotten the same treatment. There is no "ideal" candidate we could have instead.
The dirty secret is that any one of the people on that stage would do a better job than Obama has, primarily because unlike Obama, they are not immersed in an unworkable political ideology that has killed every nation, state and city that has ever succumbed to it.
Ideas count. If you're watching television news, stop.