I think Drupal was built to be a "content management framework" and not a "content management system". Out of the box, a system like Wordpress is substantially more limiting that a system like Drupal. You see Drupal projects like OpenScholar that are built with Drupal but are highly customized and don't really even look like Drupal. It's certainly possible to build a full-fledged web app with Drupal, whereas CMS systems typically have one core function. You can use Drupal as a CMS, but it does other stuff.
For most CMS use-cases I've come across, I'd rather use Wordpress. It's simpler for most website needs and provides substantially better default UI to editors.