Ryan McAvoy said:

Sadly Hayden didn't have the experience to cope without a good director to nudge him the right directions performance wise. The rest of the cast coped better to varing degrees on their own, depending on their experience. Tellingly the old pros managed to cope the best.

If Hayden had a good director, or Lucas hired somebody who had enough chops to just ignore him, then it might have been different. What we got was the blind leading the blind.

Quite false I would say. The directing was the least of a problem with PT. The first and foremost problem was the script. If the character is written as an unlikeable jerk (i.e. Anakin) or has laughable dialogue (i.e. Anakin and Padme) then the director and actor cannot do much about it within the limits of their job.

The simple reason why other actors seemed to have fared batter is that thier characters were better written or at least had some attractive characteristics (for example Obi-Wan and Palpatine).

When it comes to Lucas, his primary weakness is and has always been dialogue writing. I wouldn't say he a great actor director but judging from his first 3 films, he isn't a bad one either.