Not so sure there. Compared to the US Highway system, it would have been a bargain - in a similar period of time. Fiscally it was realistic. Technologically, it would have had a good chance to work. Politically, it wasn't attractive any more.
Goldwin was a product of his time and his boss. Remember Strauss-Howe: US society (and the West in general) oscillates between "strong institutions" regime and "weak institutions" regime with 80-year period. (I don't really understand why some people decry S-H as "pseudoscience" for making a simple empirical observation, but I digress.)
(click to zoom and read the red text)
Since any sensible lunar program requires a 20-year commitment, it follows that such program can only survive in the "strong institutions" period, never in the "weak institutions" period.
SEI had the misfortune of being proposed at the extreme of the "weak institutions" period (Fukuyama writes
The End of History, Clinton runs on
It's the economy, stupid platform). And so, SEI was killed right away. CxP, which started a decade later, managed to survive long enough to do some useful prep work, most notably fly LRO/LCROSS to recon the future landing sites.
A program which gets inititiated 2020-2025 will already start in the "strong institution" regime. This means that the program will run to completion (2040-2045), as the "strong institutions" regime should persist until 2055 in this model. However, its follow-up programs may see a series a spectacular cancellations ca. 2055, pretty much mirroring what happened during the Nixon era (ca. 1975; 1975+80=2055).
I would wager that if a next POTUS initates such a program before 2020, it will also run to completion, because the chance of cancellation will decrease with each year as the shift to "strong institutions" regime progresses. Such scenario would allow the lunar program to reach its main goals by 2035, allowing a Mars shot ca. 2050, just before US descends into "weak institutions" era again.
If you actually want to understand the mechanisms behind US space policy get
To the End of the Solar System: The Story of the Nuclear Rocket by James A. Dewar. The author has analyzed the Congressional proceedings of the Nixon era and demonstrated that the root cause of NERVA's cancellation was a massive shift which occured in US society in 1960s. That shift was caused by the coming of age of the massive Baby Boomer cohort, who have essentially voted out the proponents of space exploration and voted in proponents of social transfers; and so the money was moved accordingly. (The actual machinations involved were pretty dramatic, with plenty of political backstabbing: the space/NERVA faction believed in their cause of opening the Solar System and they did not go down without a fight.)
But, observe that the mass-cancellations of 1970s killed the beyond-LEO programs but the orbital programs survived. If history repeats again (as it tends to), then it means in 2050s the Mars program will be killed as too expensive, but the lunar program will survive. Humanity tends to move by "two steps forward, one step back". This is why Mars Direct is a dumb idea
As a side note, Dewar's book also gives another, pretty surprising insight: the worst enemy of the space exploration is the academia. This why since "science" became the official goal of the space program the progress has stalled