Can anyone offer a plausible explanation why this isn't already a feature??
Because you haven't submitted a pull request for it, of course.
As Pieter points out, it's not a two line change at all.
And although it would very much be a welcome feature I think you're overestimating it's usefulness. It's quite hard to hide the evidence of a second wallet on a partially encrypted system shell history, log entries, etc would point to the location of another wallet. We have integrated encryption already for basic security, and the concept of a not-online wallet really requires the not online-wallet be actually not-online trojans/malware/and compromises will _happily_ steal your displaced wallet when you _do_ access it, as it's absolutely trivial to just watch the bitcoin process and take whatever wallet it accesses.
I find the admonishment to use electrum in response to a message apparently concerned about security to be quite perplexing. Electrum is useful and interesting software, but it has a _much_ weaker security model.
Huh... Care to elaborate?
What are the security issues with the Electrum model, and can they lead to coin loss or theft? I'd really like to know, as I've switched to it as my main wallet and it seems to be quite well designed - even though it's still a work in progress.