One thing he would point out, that I never see discussed, was that at the time they built the mirror, there was an expectation that it may not be perfect, on account of how the Earth's gravity would slightly deform the mirror during manufacturing. As he tells the story, they'd tried to factor that into the design, but had less confidence in it. This, of course, was not the reason for the eventual problems, but to illustrate that this kind of thing was understood.
The big picture of the failure relates to the Shuttle program as well. At the time Hubble was being developed, its mission was supposed to allow for a lot more around the "shuttle" aspect: not just that it could be reused, but that it could be reused in an actual shuttling capacity, like an orbital pickup truck. So it was supposed to be possible to bring the telescope up into orbit (away from gravitational stresses), see how it worked, and if necessary, bring it back down for corrections. Since the end result of the Shuttle design cut down significantly in its capabilities in this regard, the Hubble program was left without its "Plan B".