"Incompetence personified"? That's going a bit far. That was Neville's schtick, which made his turn around as the magic snake slaying rebel leader pay off so well. Ron was always the "competent but overshadowed by his family and friends" type. He was friends with the child of prophecy Harry and the brilliant Hermione. His brothers were the hyper intelligent and charming curse breaker Bill, the rugged athlete Charlie that chose to study dragons rather than play for his country, the intelligent and ambitious political climber with an eye on the Minister of Magic seat Percy, and the highly popular twins Fred and George who were also exceedingly good at charms and created a lucrative business together. Even his father, whom everyone collectively agreed lacked ambition as far as his career went but enjoyed his work, was the heads of two different departments at the Ministry.shootthebandit said:
To his credit, as far as school went before he left he was a decent enough athlete as his team's Keeper and even managed to enjoy some academic success by getting straight B's and an A or two in his exams. Compared to his friends he was a good tactician, pragmatic and generally more level headed, and had more practical knowledge of the wizarding world as he was not raised a Muggle (Hermione, while exceedingly smart, was mostly in the academic sense). Considering that his primary role was to be the more well-adjusted (if not reasonably insecure) put upon straight man to Harry's destiny and Hermione's genius he turned out pretty well in the face of the wizarding equivalent of the Boys from Brazil second coming of Hitler magic clone saga.
Edit: As far as the viability of a Ron + Hermione pairing goes, I can see the ground work in that they've been friends for a while and have been through plenty of extreme experiences together. However, personality wise he seems the most stunted of the three. I don't know whether it's a reflection of Rowling's weakness as a writer or the limitations of having a story solely from Harry's perspective, but Hermione and Harry get way more development while Ron slowly started turning into the sidekick/third wheel of the group. Ideally he should've been the competent wizarding everyman of the group who could easily make social connections and be their vein into the wizarding community at large what with his heritage and environment growing up. However, the story seemed to be more preoccupied with the expectations placed on him because of his lineage to the point where, rather than being a force in shaping Ron's development and keeping him in check, it just flat out became his personality. Then when they finally got together near the end it seemed more like fan pandering than a reasonable outcome. It's comparable to how the popular image of Dr. Watson turned from a surgeon that was smart in his own right and a good shot with a pistol to Holmes' bumbling wide eyed side-kick until shows like House and Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes reboot.
