while i'm not sure lisp's approach is better in this case, i do think it's fairly common that 'almost every language apart from ... lisp' 'is doing it wrong', so i don't think that would be an unreasonable position to hold on those grounds ;)

You're talking about a special operator, a language primitive. In that view, let is perfectly fine and clear. Macros are what you want if syntactic sugar is needed.

I'd instead point out that an appeal to majority is a basic fallacy.

edit:

Let me also add this: you cannot get away from scoping. If you create intermediate values in your language of choice you better understand the implicit (and sometimes very complicated) scoping rules of that language. All that Common Lisp does is it makes this scoping explicit.

You've rediscovered another essential portion of Lisp: the smug lisp weenie.

> So, every other language that doesn't create a new nested scope for every consecutive group of intermediate variables is doing it wrong?

In my opinion, it is a giant, flaming misfeature.

> Which is to say, almost every language apart from Common Lisp

Algol; Ada; Modula 1, 2, and 3; Oberon; Eiffel; ...