Before the soviets got space in the political arena, projects were as such:

A winged spacecraft shuttling from the ground to a space station in Earth orbit.
It would involve many people up there, many nations and disciplines and purposes.
The Moon was but the step after that one.

It was logical.

(And that's also the state of the current manned space programs).

Then came Sputnik, Gagarine and Kennedy.

Capsules for a very few replaced shuttles for many. Capsules sent men to the Moon before men spent more than 13 days in space, before a permanent outpost existed.

That was for politics!!!
It worked!

Now the US wants to do that again.

We should always try to analyse the consequences of those decisions.

I'm pretty sure (as we realize today) a winged spacecraft would have required far more than a continuity of aerospace technology to develop (had the soviets not been in space first), so we should be thankful space got politicized and we went to the Moon!
And another thing: it has even become politically humiliating to abandon manned spaceflight!
And politics are irrational! Indeed, space has that something about passion that makes it special and difficult to skip