How do you define (meaningful) choice?

[Shurrikhan]

but WHM literally gained nothing in its loss, and lost more stuff, sorta like how DRK lost most of its kit to all tanks going into StB with the advent of Role Actions.

Which has nothing to do with old Cleric Stance being shit design. As you just pointed out, every role was affected that way, not just healers and certainly not just Cleric Stance. Its removal was largely unnoticeable to anyone who wasn't bad at handling Cleric Stance. Even the addition of Lilies and Benison being locked behind having at least one Lily was more impactful to our decision-making than was CS.

Also, I know. I specifically started that post with "been bollocks since StB" because that's when the change to Cleric Stance happened. StB means Stormblood.

Mate, I only have what you wrote to determine whether by "since" you mean "since Stormblood began" (i.e., when leaving Heavensward) or "since Stormblood ended" (i.e., when going into Shadowbringer):

The reason it improved going into ShB is they basically didn't touch it aside from their dumb lillies in StB, except that they drastically changed Cleric Stance.

Given that sentence, one would have to assume the latter.

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Tl;dr:

No, old Cleric Stance was not a good mechanic -- fundamentally, or certainly in execution.

If added back, it would almost certainly do more harm than good, whether it just become two additional weave spaces required per oGCD cast in the present context or if we actually had our way in terms of increased relative healing requirements, etc.

Yes, WHM should have had better additions in Stormblood than <literally the most iconic example across any expansion of a poorly executed addition to ever be added to any job>, but that is not relevant to its quality as a mechanic, nor was its removal significantly more felt on WHM than on other healers.