Spaceclam - oh so not true!!!!! You are buying into an Old Wives Tale.

The F-4 is actually quite nice from an aero standpoint. Remember that it could pull g's and turn with the best of the designs at that time, could do very high Mach (~2 or so) and also land on an aircraft carrier at very low speeds.

Oh yeah, it could do carrier operations with missiles and bombs (all except landing where no one in his right mind lands with live stores on the airplane).

You can't do those things without some fairly good aerodynamics.

You can make a one design airplane that flies fast with power only but just try to slow it down for a carrier landing.

Any number of modern designs have better power to weight ratios than the Phantom but we don't lay the same Old Wives Tale on them!