I think Ryan makes good points, but I think the real problem is that becoming an admin is too difficult in the first place. Whether it's making 5000 edits on EN or 500 edits on the commons, these are unnecessary requirements. Adminship should be granted to anyone who can be trusted not to screw things up, and the number of edits has no direct relevance on that point.
The fact that "adminship should be no big deal" should be a Wikimedia rule, at the foundation level. While the individual projects should have some leeway in enacting this rule (at least until the projects are better merged), I find it hard to see how someone who is an admin on the EN project could be denied adminship in the commons project. The reverse is probably also true, but I don't know enough about how hard/easy it is to get adminship on the commons.
That said, I think this thread is somewhat misdirected. This is really a Foundation issue. I suppose the Foundation isn't well enough organized to deal with it, though.
Anthony