Spaceref has an interesting editorial from a NASA employee who apparently requires a great deal of gruntling. And he understands the problem.

It is because the political answers are used in a political Congress that the Agency drifts on from crisis to crisis. It is because the political answers are used that management has become, very nearly to the grass roots level, political rather than technical. Key decisions costing and distributing millions and billions of dollars are made on a political basis rather than a technical one. Political achievement is rewarded, not technical achievement. Frosting over all of this is the utter hypocrisy pushed constantly by our leaders that the opposite is true, that technologists are wanted and valued and desperately needed when even a blind technologist can see the plain truth before him.

Fascinating editorial. While both of us (and most of your readers as well) see the situation in terms which include interest groups other than politicians and technologists (customers, anyone? entrepreneurs?), the central point, that "[p]olitical achievement is rewarded, not technical achievement" -- should be trumpeted on every editorial page in the country. One has only to look at the solid-rocket boosters strapped to the Shuttle to see a particularly egregious (and deadly) political design element. The Soviets had Khrushchev demanding the impossible; we have Congress.

You could replace "NASA" with "Amtrak" and not have to change much. Prime argument for the government to stay out of fiddling with technology.