What is that based on? NASA's recent accomplishments are far beyond anyone. Off the top of my head: The many Mars missions, JWST, Europa Clipper (still in progress), etc. SpaceX hasn't left Earth orbit, afaik.
Their explorer robotics are interesting, something I would be proud to work on; but a pretty different nitch.
So NASA is not drawing from the best people anymore.
NASA doesn't develop or build lots of technology that has become mature enough that private industry can take it on and NASA can focus on the past-the-bleeding-edge stuff.
Reality? Outside of JPL the talent level at Nasa is frankly very poor. You really want to claim that the current version of Nasa could pull off the Apollo program today?