More fodder for the NASA administrator rumor mill

The Washington Post’s Joel Achenbach, who wrote the article expressing Sen. Bill Nelson’s frustration at the lack of a NASA administrator, blogged today about another potential candidate: Congressman Bart Gordon, chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee. Achenbach said he asked Gordon about the job and that Gordon “said he already has the best job in the world and isn’t going to trade it in for another”; nonetheless, Achenbach wants to keep Gordon on the list of potential candidates.

I heard Gordon’s name come up last week in conversation in Colorado at the National Space Symposium, but the assessment at the time was that Gordon had little to gain by taking the position: he already has significant power as a House committee chairman and is also the senior member of the Tennessee congressional delegation, having been first elected to Congress in 1984. Taking the NASA administrator job would appear to short-circuit any future political ambitions he might have, be they running more prominent committees in the House or moving on to the Senate or governor.

In that same conversation another name came up, also from the House Science Committee: David Wu, who chairs the technology and innovation subcommittee and also sits on the space subcommittee. It’s not clear if he would be interested in the job (or how seriously he might be considered, if at all) but the same arguments against him taking the job apply: if he has his eyes set on higher office (or a more prominent role in the House), being NASA administrator wouldn’t necessarily be helpful.