As much as I love Star Wars George Lucas is HIGHLY overrated in his ability to tell a story. If you go back and see what he originally wanted to do with SW it would have been just as awful as the prequels, if not worse.
The original movies forced a lot of restrictions on him and he had a lot of people telling him what he could or couldn't do. With the prequels he was surrounded by nothing but yes men that refused to challenge some of his idiotic ideas or to point out that he was breaking his own canon.