Normal VGA text mode is equivalent to 640x400 pixels, so if you compare that to a game using 640x400 graphics, yes, the effect is about the same. But a 320x200 graphics game with a normal2x scaler has doubled pixels, and I think the aspect correction looks just fine on that, even in a window.
Not all text modes have a 1.2 pixel aspect ratio; e.g. machine=vgaonly has VGA text of 720x400, which would need a pixel aspect ratio of 1.35 to create 4:3 aspect (720x540). So there are some considerations in calculating the correct aspect for text.
Something like "aspect=true forced" could be used to disable the 1:1 aspect override on text, but not sure if the devs could be sold on the idea.