A Campaign Vow Come Due

[Commentary] As the nation veers toward an era of laissez-faire campaign spending by corporations and unions, it is urgent that President Barack Obama deliver on his promise to repair the system of publicly subsidized campaign financing. A new bipartisan proposal to update the public option seems tailored for Obama's promise to tune the system to the realities of modern campaigns. The measure faces up to the devastating effects of the Supreme Court's striking down decades of limits on corporate campaign spending -- a decision President Obama heatedly denounced. It does so by putting the focus on the sort of small-donation Web supporters that he pioneered. The measure creates a four-to-one federal matching formula for donations up to $200 in primary and general elections, requiring participants to honor both cycles. In the face of the legalized flood of special-interest dollars, the proposal necessarily drops the past spending limits for public-option candidates. But it allows them matching funds of up to $100 million in primary races and up to $200 million in the general election.