Photo by furcafe.

After D.C. Council Chair Kwame Brown decided to move Councilmember Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6) off of his perch atop the Committee on Transportation and Public Works earlier this week, no amount of outrage from Wells’ most fervent supporters was able to stop Brown’s move. Not only did no one speak up on behalf of Wells, but he was the only one left voting against the council re-shuffling.

In recent days, though, a number of councilmembers have apparently started suffering from a serious case of buyers remorse. According to Wells, some of his colleagues have apologized to him for their votes. “A few CMs apologized today. Apparently too surprised and confused to act,” he tweeted yesterday. And on TBD NewsTalk with Bruce DePuyt today, Councilmember Phil Mendelson (D-At Large) not only admitted that he regretted the shuffling, but that he and his colleagues sheepishly went along with it.

“If you look at the wide shot, we’re all quiet, with our heads down,” Mendelson said.

Despite the general outpouring of support for Wells since the reshuffling, he’s remained circumspect and diplomatic about it, refusing to say exactly what’s likely on his mind. Today on The Kojo Nnamdi Show, Wells only mildly criticized the game of musical chairs he’s been subjected to — he called it “wasteful,” since committee staffs change along with their bosses, taking with them experience and institutional memory — and spared his fellow councilmembers any ill words. “My colleagues did what they thought they had to do,” he said. (Wells also dropped this campaign-worthy nugget: “My loyalty is to the residents of the District.”)

Note what Wells said — his colleagues did “what they had to.” Not what was right, but rather, what they felt would keep them from being next in line on Brown’s list of candidates for lesser committee spots. There’s certainly something to be said for that, as politics can quickly turn into a game of self-preservation. But after-the-fact apologies only makes the Council look more foolish.

If any of Wells’ colleagues were uncomfortable with the mid-session re-shuffling, they could have employed any number of parliamentary tricks to delay the vote. They could have voted “present,” which Brown famously did himself in a 2008 confirmation vote on Peter Nickles to serve as the District’s Attorney General. A “present” vote implies neither support nor opposition; it’s a legislative way to say, “I’m here, but that’s about it.” Heck, someone could have voted no. There’s only so many demotions that Brown could mete out before everyone was assigned to their own customized committee charged with finding every typo in the District’s lengthy Municipal Regulations, after all.

Brown may have had very good reasons for the shuffling. Councilmember Vincent Orange (D-At Large) finally has a committee, to be sure, which he didn’t before. But whatever those reasons are, they’re not being communicated very well, nor do most people seem to buy them. For all the apologizing going around, it seems clear that even the councilmembers that cast the votes aren’t so sure of themselves.