Given the scale of the offense, I'm not sure the old Watergate-inspired line, "It's not the crime as much as the cover-up" applies to the now apparently concluded tale of Secretary of State Mark Ritchie's campaign solicitation problems. But anyone inclined to criticize the Star Tribune—from reporter Mark Brunswick to his boss, Doug Tice—for being overly aggressive has to first concede that Ritchie made the cardinal mistake of giving the paper reason to return—again and again—to the story by not disclosing everything in round one.

The injury-by-trickle-out argument withstanding, the Strib's Ritchie coverage gives some parties—OK, me—reason to stick their snouts back into a couple long-standing memes regarding the paper's political coverage.

First is the age-old criticism of the Star Tribune as a publicity arm of the DFL, or, if you're a real "made" wing nut, "a national laughingstock" for its political correctness and liberal bias.

Second is the problematic presence of Tice, who was for twelve years a well-known and well-regarded conservative/libertarian columnist for the Pioneer Press, as the Strib's political editor, the guy largely deciding what story gets covered and how often.

On the first, the gripe among some of the left-of-center crowd was that the paper had gone overboard on the Ritchie business, pursuing what, at worst, was an exceedingly minor violation. And it did it, in part, as a way of countering the usual attacks from right wingers that the paper has a soft spot for all things Democrat. As though someone—Tice? Nancy Barnes?—looked at the Ritchie flap and calculated that they could boost their cred with Republicans and the wing-nut-o-sphere by giving Ritchie a couple extra mashes of the hammer beyond what might normally seem appropriate. (The Taxpayers League of Minnesota's role as a prime complainant in the Ritchie scuffle gooses this theory.)

I'm not trying to inflate this beyond the grumbling of a few members of the chattering classes. But, as I say, it plays to a certain contentious line of thought, and stranger things have happened.

As for the Tice question, I actually managed to get him on the phone this afternoon. Tice was my boss years ago at the Twin Cities Reader and a colleague while we were both at the Pioneer Press. Recently though, as calls went unreturned, I began to think he didn't see any value in associating live quotes from him in this blog.

When he made the mistake of answering his phone, I gave him the option of kicking the call over to his answering machine.

"Oh. Hi, Brian," he said with a kind of puckered cheerfulness.

On the Ritchie story, he conceded, "No, it isn't a grave scandal. And it may very well have gone away sooner had Ritchie's explanations not started to contradict themselves. But when they did, it required us to pursue it further.

We write stories routinely about election complaints. Mike Hatch. Tim Pawlenty. There is nothing unusual about it. We do it all the time. Most of the time these stories amount to nothing."

So you're saying you publish a lot of stories about nothing?

Tice who, thank God, has a sense of humor, replied, "Yes, I guess I'd have to admit that."

Anyway, Tice argues that Ritchie's at-odds assertions sent the paper, Mark Brunswick in particular, back again and again, and there's nothing more than that to the paper zest for this particular story—even though, as he admits, that Ritchie promising a 180 from the more flagrant transgressions of his predecessor, Mary Kiffmeyer, obviously handed the paper the always-irresistible hypocrisy card.

As for the suspicion that the paper actively calculated against Ritchie, Tice jokes, "Well, I wasn't in on that meeting. I can't say anyone encouraged or discouraged any of the Ritchie stories."

With an unusually provocative election year shaping up, (Republican National Convention, Franken v. Coleman, Michele Bachmann, Pawlenty for VP, etc.) Tice, the well-established conservative running the state's largest team of political reporters, seems certain to be questioned again and not just by me.

Any editor with his kind of clear ideological preference keeps his paper in a position of regularly defending his impartiality in ways it might not if the political editor were some ordinary schmuck without a thousand published columns affirming his political preferences.

At this point, let me assert that I have never heard any of Tice's reporters—each and every one of them the kind of sullen, disputatious, intensely skeptical bastard you want covering politicians—accuse him of  partisanship. To the contrary, each insists Tice has been entirely fair-minded.

One rumor in play recently had Tice giving up his political editorship to return to writing, presumably for the Strib's decimated Op-Ed department, a section in dire need of lucid, original conservative thinking. (One more Jonah Goldberg or Jason Lewis column . . . )

Tice says he has had no discussions about making such a move.

"The thing is, with this job, I actually like it a lot, and now I'm into it pretty deeply in what looks to be a pretty interesting year. I've never supervised coverage for a national convention before. But around here, with the way things have been going, anything could happen."

He says he "talks to DFLers all the time" and takes the predictable shots for his coverage.

"But we take the same shots from Republicans. So somehow my presence here hasn't put their minds to rest."

The point here, as I've said before, is the "appearance problem." Something finicky, old-style newspapers used to go to great pains to avoid. In an era of "right-sizing" (TM—Par Ridder), where more-accountant-than-journalist newspaper bosses regularly ignore specialized talents amid their forced reorganizations, the Strib might be fortunate to have someone such as Tice in the building to slide in and ramrod so important a beat.

But come on, tell me there isn't a dual-upside twofer in returning Doug Tice to Op-Ed. The paper gains in terms of intellectual credibility on its opinion pages and avoids at least one layer of accusation of bias.

Oh yeah. One more thing. Did I mention that Tice's reliably conservative columns in the Pioneer Press were actually coherent and never felt coached or like a tinny echo?