I wish you had an argument better than "every bright beginner assumes it exists". :-)
But (unlike for some other things that bright beginners might assume) I don't think there's a deep reason why this couldn't exist.
The only reasons I can come up with is "because input and output are notoriously asymmetric in Python" and "because nobody submitted a patch". :-)
My reason is that I've rolled-my-own more times than I can count but infrequently enough to where it was easier to re-write than to search for the previous use.
Another quick thought: I presume that only the str() builtin would change and that the underlying __str__ slot would continue to be hard-wired to the (reprfunc) signature.
Raymond