Jay, can you elaborate on why you think 'cue ball fouls only' is confusing? It's always been very simple, basic, cut, and dry to me. If the cue ball doesn't touch the player's object ball, or the lowest numbered ball on the table first (depending on the game), and cause either the cue ball or an object ball to touch a rail, then it is a foul.
Seems to me the problems you could run into with 'cue ball fouls only' (i.e. push-through shots, whether the player contacted the correct ball first, whether the ball touched a rail or not, etc) will still exist, only we will be calling fouls on all other balls on top of them. In my opinion, that doesn't help the game, it hinders it and slows it down.
I can understand the desire for a universal system for determining how we should approach a situation like, for example, a player who accidentally disturbs the current lie of one or more balls on the table with his/her body or cue. However, it has been my experience that the hardest part about a situation like that is determining where the ball(s) was/were ... not whether or not to punish the offender.
When the dust settles, and after you call the foul for someone contacting a ball, you're still faced with the hard part, which is figuring out exactly where the ball was.