No, it was going downhill when Craig Barrett was CEO. He made lots of stupid mistakes, getting involved in too many risky and unnecessary ventures (like consumer products: remember the Intel keyboard and mouse? Or music player? Or worse, microscope?). The big one was tying the P4 processor to RAMBUS memory.

Yes, it started with Barrett but became painfully obvious under Otellini. When Steve Jobs asked Intel to build a chip for future iPhone Otellini said no -- one of the biggest strategic blunders. Also in 2005 Intel paid Dell not to use superior AMD offering instead of putting all hands on deck fixing their own (they did achieve parity eventually).