Hypothetical honest NASA administrator

The prime minister of Hungary recently got into trouble for an honest
assessment of his own government's performance:

"We screwed up. Not a little, a lot [...] No European country has done
something as boneheaded as we have. ... I almost died when for a year
and a half we had to pretend we were governing. Instead, we lied
morning, evening and night." [The economy only survived because of]
"divine providence, the abundance of cash in the world economy and
hundreds of tricks.", and so on.

I found this very refreshing. Suppose you could catch the NASA leaders
in a similar moment of candor. Do you think they'd say something in
the spirit of the comment above, or do they really believe what they
are saying?

"Our goal is well paying jobs in the states of a majority of senators.
We only pretend we are interested in research and astronaut safety.
Sure, letting industry build transport would be faster, cheaper and
safer, but we explicitly set our requirements so only our preferred
(for political reasons) vendors can win. Nothing is too much of a
stretch to preserve those jobs in Utah, I always say".

It's hard for me to imagine that folks smart enough to build rockets
don't realize what they are doing, but the evidence is definitely
ambiguous...

Lou Scheffer