That's right. You read correctly. Gov. Rendell for chief of staff - to President Obama, that is.
The governor's name is mentioned in a Politico story today as a "wild card" choice to become Obama's next go-to guy should current chief of staff Rahm Emanuel resign to run for mayor of Chicago.
Wild indeed.
The Politico story is actually about well-informed speculation in Washington that Emanuel will make the leap and run for the Windy City's top job now that Mayor Richard Daley is withdrawing from the race.
It lists a number of other people as more likely candidates, including Tom Donilon, a deputy national security adviser with a political resume harking back to the Carter-Mondale campaign; and Ron Klain, chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden.
But lower in the story, there is this intriguing line: "A wild card could be a Democratic officeholder, such as outgoing Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell or Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia."
Rendell spokesman Gary Tuma said he ran the notion by Rendell this afternoon, and that the governor's response was: "I'm for Mark Warner."
Indeed, it is a long shot, but Rendell is, after all, going to be out of job come mid-January. That is when his second (and last) term as governor ends.
The governor hasn't said much publicly about his next move, although in an Inquirer story earlier this year, he hinted that life after Harrisburg would likely involve a long list of endeavors, including more teaching (he teaches a political science class at the University of Pennsylvania); more sports talk ("I can't believe people get paid to do that"); the completion of his memoir; and a continued push to revitalize the country's infrastructure (there has been talk of creating a national infrastructure bank to leverage private investment).
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