She is also best dismissed as a political philosopher. As a means of shocking people into seeing the existence of bad guys her books do provide a valuable service. She was neither the first, nor the best, at describing those folks, but she was able to reach a wide audience.
But aside from the "raw power" of her novelistic introduction to a certain class of people (of which every single one of us is a member at some level), Chambers absolutely nails the problems with her political philosophy. It is noxious when put into practice, for the reasons he sketches out.
The reason for its toxicity as a political philosophy, is that it is based on Ms. Rand's Objectivism -- and for that, a bit of rudimentary reasoning reveals it to be a fundamentally irrational philosophy. One simply cannot look at the real world, and come up with the allegedly "absolute" principles she claims to have discovered.
Her political philosophy was a distilled essence of modern libertarianism, and it did not rest, or need to rest, on Objectivism.
Objectivism itself is much more forgettable than her works.
You can at least argue the point, though - not very successfully, of course, but you can formulate something resembling an argument in its favor. Not a particularly good argument, but an argument nonetheless.
What is inarguable, IMO, is Rand's execrable writing "style". The dialogue is stilted, stiff, and unnatural - rigor mortis sets in within the first 50 pages or so. The plot manages to be simultaneously leaden, yet ludicrous, as Rand v e r y s l o w l y introduces a series of increasingly improbable and ridiculous plot points over the course of 1100 pages. The characters have all the depth and dimension of paper cutouts, where cartoonish heroes resembling extremely vanilla versions of Mighty Mouse battle with exceptionally banal villains, who spend most of the book rubbing their hands in glee and twirling their handlebar moustaches in the very best Snidely Whiplash tradition.
And, best of all, it all culminates in a truly absurd ending, where the protagonists retire to the Elysian fields of Galt's Gulch, complete, we assume, with a full cadre of Epsilon-Minuses to handle the nitty-gritty details of daily life. Because, let's be honest - you can't even imagine Dagny taking a dump, let alone wielding a plumber's helper, can you? No, I think not. Hell, you can't imagine any of those clowns doing anything so plebeian as, say, their own laundry, but somehow they're going to emerge and run the world. Right.
Literary value: nil.
This doen't mean that I didn't benefit from exposure to it as a kid, but it certainly isn't on any book list of mine.