Is NASA dying?? If so, whose fault is it?

The obvious choice is Mr. O'Keefe, arguably the worst NASA
Administrator ever. If you have any doubts, check out his performance
in regards to the 3 of NASA's major programs: Shuttle, ISS and Hubble.

Since O'Keefe will likely exit NASA after the election, the bigger
question is the future of NASA. The most likely long term scenario
for NASA is that Shuttle retires itself, ISS continues to depend on
the Russians (in minimal mode), and the Moon Mars thing quietly fades
away as the other crises overwhelm the NASA bureaucracy. All the
while, private astronauts fly ever higher suborbital missions.

One could argue that there is indeed a space race - if private
astronauts get into orbit using totally private systems BEFORE NASA
can send astronauts beyond orbit, then it would obvious that we don't
NASA's version of human spaceflight - why spend billions of taxpayer
dollars to fly NASA astronauts when any idiot can simply buy a ticket
into space?

For the first time, an end for NASA is in sight. If NASA does not have
its act together soon, even Congress would be forced to cut the human
spaceflight program in the wake of private orbital spaceflight, and
Marshall Spaceflight and the other centers would no longer have the
ability to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on such turkeys as
Propulsion Module, X-34, X-38 and the like.

NASA *must* produce results in the near term to survive. Without the
Shuttle, no amount of feel good propaganda will help.

The end is near.