OK, Common Lisp as described by the standardization process has always had lexical scoping, no argument there. Lisp, including the variants of Lisp that CL was largely derived from, did not always have lexical scoping.

So what you are saying is a lot like if I said "C++11 has ALWAYS had the auto keyword!". While I ignore the fact that C++ did not always have the auto keyword, and the repeated typing of the same type signature over and over was a major complaint about the language for over 20 years. Yes, it's true, but it's just ignoring reality and not informative to the overall point I was making, which was Lisp is clearly not designed to make lexical scoping 'nice', because lisp predates the use of lexical scope being the dominant way to do scoping. You can see that in the very conception of scheme, originally designed to be "Lisp but with lexical scoping".

Edit: corrected responding to the wrong person. For the record "Jtsummers" and "iLemming" do look quite a bit more alike than two random usernames!