Ben: interesting question. And for a lot of multi-course resorts, I think you'd be right. But to be honest, at Bandon, I think the opposite is true. Which is to say that I think each of the individual courses is actually bolstered by its relationship with and proximity to the others. I think part of my feeling on that has to do with the location of the resort. Bandon is so isolated (at least it feels that way for an east-coaster - it's easier for me to get to Scotland than to Bandon). So when you're there, you're typically going to be there for an extended period of time, you're typically only going to be there, since there's nowhere else to go, and you're probably going to be playing at least some of the courses more than once. Another factor is that the courses are all so different - I don't think anyone could play the Bandon courses and believe that any one of them wouldn't be able to stand on it's own merits.
Ranking the courses is a futile enterprise, though it can provide for some fun discussion, especially among your own playing companions. My own "ranking" of the four has changed many times over the last month until I finally just gave up. They're all outstanding.
Joel: true, but one of the things I thought was so cool about Preserve was that the tee boxes provided more of a suggestion than a mandate. The back and front yardages as marked were really more of a "max-min" distance guide, and since most of the tee boxes were continuous, you can really just pick your preferred distance on almost every hole. So if you want to play the second from 105 with a wedge, you can do it. A very underrated feature.