SW is Lucas's toy, and he's an adult, how could you convince him that certain things needed to be slapped down?
I understand where you're coming from with this, but I think it's just a testiment to Lucas' ego, which has GOT to be huge. He's probably the most powerful force in movies today. No one is going to argue with him after all the money he's made.
I think the prequels are going to be laughed at in 10 years time. People are going to look at it and say they are shit.
I just think that Lucas shouldn't have done any more Star Wars movies. I'm happy with the OT.
As for the Firefly stuff you said, none, he does have plenty of people working with him, but in some of the other commentaries, the writers said that Joss would change and add stuff. So to me, it has his handprints on everything, but it isn't ALL Joss. The prequels is ALL Lucas.
Even if he had help on AOTC, it's still all Lucas. The OT had other writers all the way through. Even the Star Wars script was doctored by some other writers even though Lucas got credit for it. Empire and Jedi were written totally by people other than Lucas.