I think it's more about pushing you mind towards a more imperative and sequential way of thinking than compactness (see my comment above)... but this shouldn't be "anti-Lisp" since Lisps have always tried to be "multi-paradigm"...

For what it's worth, I'm not trying to be anti-Lisp with my remarks. I'm just trying to point out that this particular widely-cited example of a macro is false advertising.