The OpenPGP RFC bis does add AEAD. The spec is overall much too flexible IMO and could use some modernization, but I don't see it as un-salvageable, as you seem to.
OpenPGP is unsalvageable. One of the core goals of modern cryptography is to eliminate backwards compatibility with insecure 1990s crypto; OpenPGP instead lovingly preserves it.
Much of that could be solved by an implementation having user-controlled policies that whitelist/blacklist sets of algorithms. An implementation could be made with a sane default policy.
Of course, some things ought to just be replaced (S2K).
