if anyone could answer the following questions, I think it would help the conversation:
a) What are other RPGs/systems that use mechanics similar to the "mother may I" skill checks in 4e?
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(Just as a side note, skill challenges don't count as a degree-of-success mechanic. They're still pass/fail... They don't even count as a "group skill check" in most cases, because the players are invited to BS their way into using non-relevant skills in the test. They wind up being something close to a "everybody-use-their-best-skills-and-make-up-a-narrative-to-justify-it" check and as a result don't test anything specific about the characters. Kinda like an "average level check" to defeat the encounter's "SR"...)
Skill challenges are pass/fail on the individual chekcs, but give degrees of success for the overall challenge based on number of failures accrued when success occurs, or vice versa - see the examples in DMG 2.
As to "everybody-use-their-best-skills-and-make-up-a-narrative" - that's roughly what I meant by referring to a modern trend in RPG design. In practice, the pre-existing narrative is likely to place constraints on what can be added on, which then means that the best skill may not always be useable. But the notion of reasonably broad skills/attributes, and of players contributing to the ingame reality in a way that frames their skill use and thus helps determine the consequences of success or failure, is what 4e seems to me to be about. It's quite different from an approach in which the player roles a skill check, gets a result, and then hands all narrative power to the GM to decide what that result actually means in the gameworld.
Other games that work more-or-less like this would include The Dying Earth (which is also Robin Laws, I think), Sorcerer and (I think) Burning Wheel, as well as more avant-garde games like My Life With Master or Nicotine Girls.
b) If 4e was supposed to be an indie/modern showcase, why did it end up in its weird hybrid final form, i.e. flimsy/non-existent out-of-combat rules, super-glued onto the back of a relatively uber-crunch minis combat system? Doesn't devoting so much page-count to the part of the game that they didn't "modernize", kind of negate whatever trendsetting they're trying to do with the "indie" parts?
I agree that there is a tension between these two parts of the game (skill challenges and combat resolution) but I don't think that what you've said quite captures it.
Like skill challenges, the combat mechanics assume that players will be working with the GM to frame the narrative and the stakes and then uses their powers within that context - otherwise, powers like Come and Get It make no sense (ie it's not literally the case that, in the gameworld, the fighter makes all his enemies charge him once per encounter - rather, by using this power the player of the fighter is entitled to explain, in the narrative, what happens such that all his enemies close in) and nor do a lot of interrupts. Nor, for that matter, do hit points and healing surges, which can't possibly be treated as physical damage a la Runequest or Rolemaster or (some people's readings of) 3rd ed D&D.
Where the incongruity occurs, at least in my experience, is that there is only very patchy guidance for the GM (none in the DMG, a little bit in DMG2) on how to integrate the two sorts of resolution systems together. For example, a skill challenge I am likely to be running in my next session involves finding a goblin stronghold in a hidden valley and sneaking into it. As part of that challenge, it would makes sense for the ranger to try and pick off lone sentries with bow fire. But the rules are extremely vague on how this should be resolved within the mechanical context of the challenge - ie can an attack be made in lieu of a skill check, and if it's a success then the sentry is dead, but if it's a failure then the sentry notices and begins to raise the alarm? Or is the attack an attempt to aid another at stealth? The DMG2 is very sketchy on this, but (given the intricate mechanical balance of 4e) it would be nice to be given much more concrete advice on how to run it. (I'm taking it for granted that this is not something that one would want to resolve using the actual combat mechanics - those are for serious fights, not picking off lone sentries. In this respect there is at least a degree of resemblance to the distinction, in HeroQuest, between simple and extended contests.)
