There is no intrinsic reason other than that why he, or any other
government sponsored individual/organization will automagically have
failed while the Wrights succeeded.

Agreed on that. The failure of Kistler (despite adequate funding) and
any number of other space startups (mostly due to failure to raise
funding) is worth remembering.

For instance; SS1's current demonstrated performance barely matches
the X-1 (nearly fifty years ago), and in it's final form will barely
match the X-15 (over forty years ago). Simple bald facts, but
embarrassing to the 'four legs/two legs' mindset.

Ah, but much of this debate is about changing the figures of merit
away from performance and towards measures such as cost per flight,
reliability (only demonstrable with large numbers of flights),
turnaround time between flights, size of ground crew, etc.

Now, I don't happen to know just where the X-1 and X-15 score on those
metrics. Just to pick one I could quickly find: 199 missions over 10
years ( http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/Hi...15/chrono.html )
isn't much by aircraft standards, but it is still more than just about
any launcher (with the possible exception of a few Russian models).