“I had a first year like none other,” D.C. Council Chairman Kwame R. Brown recently told me. That was, of course, an understatement. The turbulence inside city hall has been at Category 5 hurricane velocity: Key council staffers decamped; the government faced a multimillion-dollar budget shortfall and near-depleted reserves; there was record unemployment and multiple investigations of multiple legislators.

Brown promised in his inaugural speech to raise the standard of government. Then, he became embroiled in an ethics controversy surrounding his demand for a tricked-out luxury sports utility vehicle, modeled after the mayor’s.