Well I'm an idiot - the fulltext index on page_text was missing from a default installation. It didn't break searches but probably slowed them down tremendously. Also set engine to MyISAM on page_text to avoid cryptic error messages from MySQL.

/* This is the CSS file for the noneditable elements plugin */

.mceEditable {
	/*border: 1px dotted #0000cc;*/
}

.mceNonEditable {
	/*border: 1px dotted #cc0000;*/
}