New York Times Editorial

Once upon a time, Washington managed to fully confront a corruption scandal and invent a government solution that actually worked for 30 years. The scandal was Watergate. The solution was the innovative option of providing public financing to presidential campaigns as a means of curbing the influence of big money donors like those who ran amok in President Richard Nixon’s 1972 re-election.

Since then, candidates opted for the subsidies — and the spending limits that come with them — in every general election. And most did in the primary elections, too. But not next time. Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain have already signaled their intentions to make a shameful and lucrative retreat to private fund-raising. The Clinton camp is creating a new honored donor category for those who bag at least a million dollars each, with strategists mirthfully debating whether to dub these fat-cat groomers “Pathfinders” or “Hillraisers.” We suggest Recidivists.

Whoever the two nominees are, they will very likely ring up the first $1 billion presidential cycle between them. All of this is because past Congresses failed to update the public financing option to keep pace with the costs of running a modern campaign.

The new Congress already has a bipartisan proposal in the works to update the public financing formula in time for 2012. It roughly triples subsidies for a participating candidate to $150 million in the primaries, and increases them by a third, to $100 million, in the general election. There would be a four-to-one match of donations up to $200 instead of the current one-to-one, plus an extra subsidy if a privately funded candidate’s checkbook overwhelms competitiveness. Funds would be available earlier for the ever-earlier primary cycle.

Public financing served the nation well. In three of six races in which an incumbent president ran, the challenger won — a healthy dynamic in a capital city where only one in 20 House incumbents is toppled by a challenger.

The new Congress pledged to clean up big-money corruption; it can make a good start by rescuing the good that came of Watergate.