I think you've been reading Spider-Man longer than I, Box, but in the stories I've read -- the first six or so Essentials, and everything modern starting when JMS came on board -- there has always been a mixture of Peter doing really smart things and doing stupid things / screwing up.
This, of course, doesn't mean that a mixture like that is the "Right" way of writing Spider-Man, but it really makes me wonder why you would get so bent out of shape about it. Have you been complaining about this for years and I'm only now paying attention? Is there a "true" era of Spider-Man you can point two where he doesn't make mistakes? Or, is there some basis on which you are judging some screw-ups to be okay and others to be garbage? Because this seems par for the course to me. I don't especially like it when fictional characters suddenly become stupid for the sake of narrative convenience, but it's such a widespread phenomenon that I usually just sigh and move on.