Imaro
Legend
IMHO several things happened. 4e was really pushed by the D&D group, this was Hasbro politics. They brewed up a design, Orcus, and started playtesting it and it just didn't gel. By that point they had apparently already basically committed to a release timeframe, so they went back and hammered out a rehash of the core system, which produced 4e. However, it was now behind, and they simply ran it through the process at high speed. Playtesting didn't get to the level of getting it out to enough people outside the 'box' of the designers and people they knew, so they never quite saw that people basically weren't playing the game they were writing. Things like the DMG simply weren't properly edited and vetted. MM1 has all sorts of monsters that were clearly designed to some earlier standard and then hastily revised (or not) as the game evolved quickly.
4e should have waited a year and been released at 2009 Gen Con. It also would have been a little better climate overall, considering the economy and other craziness that was going on at the time. Anyway DMG1 seems to be halfway caught between design paradigms. It does have a lot of stuff in it that points to the sort of game you and I and Pemerton and others have played with 4e, but at the same time its not fully coherent. Another factor is I think they may have gotten a bit scared of just how FAR 4e could have gone. Maybe they DID right a DMG that expounded a fully story centered sort of game, and decided it was bridge too far at the last minute.
http://dmdavid.com/tag/why-fourth-edition-seemed-like-the-savior-dungeons-dragons-needed/
Here's some interesting reading on 4e and the driving factors behind it's design.. it seems to suggest that bottling the appeal of mmorpg's as well as ensuring portability to a VT were primary (though not the only) influences on the design of the rules system as opposed to it's primary driver being indie design goals... I'm curious whether you think there necessarily has to be some tension between these sets of design golas (the type of play you ascribe to 4e vs. the type of rules set that would cater to the mmorpg market/VTT users. Also if these were their driving factors it might explain why there is little to no advice and guidance around the play of 4e in the way many with indie experience choose to run 4e.