This is exactly correct in the context of the decision as it played out, but stretches and re-engines are very common in commercial airlines. Changing that decision without reinforcing the safety culture probably would have ended in the same place.
Taking a step back, I think it's more than that. It's just the company structure. It remains to be seen if SpaceX and Tesla survive long term. But if they do, a lot will be attributed to the company structure that Elon designed. When you have a company that does stuff like this: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1InUlHXv718
Compared to Airbus: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KS9Xt6hmbTU
You just think to yourself, even if the airplane was completely safe, and they are incredibly safe, this is just not a great look. Both doors accomplish the task but little thought was put into the operator of the door. The little things matter and I notice them more and more everywhere I go with a lot of legacy American companies.
In fact, I would say there's probably a very narrow set of circumstances where his back to the drawing board approach can be deployed successfuly.
That said, the 787 Dreamliner remains statistically one of the safest widebody long-haul aircraft in commercial aviation history, which I think is a Counterpoint. It achieves this despite any more globally diverse supply chain, and moving production out of unionized Boeing manufacturing plants.
Safety by Design and design for manufacturability can help eliminate the possibility of quality issues during production.
He applied it to Tesla and SpaceX, which are very very different.
His approach probably wouldn't work as well if you threw him in as CEO of a random company like JC penny or Pizza Hut. Other CEO's are good at different things - like squeezing the extra 0.1% out of a 40 year old brand or product line
Now I'm thinking about him firing the pizza cooks and bringing in a crack team of engineers to redesign the concept of Pizza from first principles.
I.e. products that everyone else dismisses as impractical/impossible. And then people complain when he's late delivering the impossible products.