When I wrote the above, the point I was tryng to make was this;
How we percieve the quality of a bike's handling has more to do with what we have become accustomed to than than any specific geometric or ergonomic criteria. Our subconsious grows to expect a certain reaction from the bike to subtle movements of our hands and bodies. When the reaction isn't what we subconsiously expect, our brain thinks something is wrong, which we interpret as the bike not handling well.

Subtle things -
Weight distribution determines how quickly a bike will react on the roll axis to a given steering input.

Hand position in relation to the steering axis determines with how much force, over what distance and perhaps most importantly at what vector, you need to move your hands to get an expected steering or balancing correction. Change any of these variables, the reaction is different and your subconsious tells you "Somethin' ain't right".

Most of my recumbents have the hand grips 8-10" behind the steering axis, so for small corrections they follow a path close to 45 degrees from the plane of the frame. When I built one with wider bars, and the grips only 5" or 6" behind the steering axis, my muscle memory tried to move my hands along the familar path and met resistance, which I initially interpreted as a tight headset. Until I figured out what was going on, I thought it handled terribly.

Within reasonable limits, it's hard to set up a bike such that someone won't think it handles great. You and/or I may dissagree, but that doesn't mean there's any thing wrong with the bike, just that it's wrong for us.