I guess everyone has their own preferences, I just find this opinion surprising given the wealth of other hikes in the country.
As someone who grew up hiking in the White Mountains before moving to Washington, the mountains in Washington (and many places in the West) are just on a whole different level.
Franconia ridge is stellar, but so is angels landing in Zion or the Half Done cables or the Kaibob trail in the Grand Canyon or many others that are hard to compare and all worth the trip.