To support your argument, p-code is closer to what a portable, assembly language looks like. It's an abstract machine that can be trivially targeted to about any CISC or RISC machine. Let amateurs without compiler knowledge port Pascal/P to around 70 architectures in 2 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-code_machine

Linoleum was another:

http://anynowhere.com/bb/layout/html/frameset.html

The closest in C land was C-- by Jones et al which still looks heavy compared to p-code:

http://www.cs.tufts.edu/~nr/c--/index.html