The question was: "If you are nominated for President in 2008 and your major opponents agree to forgo private funding in the general election campaign, will you participate in the presidential public financing system?"

Obama checked: "Yes"

In February 2007, I proposed a novel way to preserve the strength of the public financing system in the 2008 election. My plan requires both major party candidates to agree on a fundraising truce, return excess money from donors, and stay within the public financing system for the general election. My proposal followed announcements by some presidential candidates that they would forgo public financing so they could raise unlimited funds in the general election. The Federal Election Commission ruled the proposal legal, and Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has already pledged to accept this fundraising pledge. If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election.

We have created a parallel public financing system where the American people decide if they want to support a campaign they can get on the Internet and finance it, and they will have as much access and influence over the course and direction of our campaign that has traditionally been reserved for the wealthy and the powerful.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton on Thursday called public financing "an option that we wanted on the table," but said "there is no pledge" to take the money and the spending limitations that come with it.

The Obama campaign has said different things at different times on the issue of public financing. While there may have been a little wriggle room in some campaign statements, Obama's affirmative answer to the Midwest Democracy Network seems unequivocal. Now that Obama is raising $1 million a day, his enthusiasm for public financing appears to have waned.

All three presidential candidates are much better at exposing the flaws in each other's Iraq strategy than explaining and defending their own policy. The truth is that there is no painless way out of the Iraq imbroglio. There are huge costs to staying in, and huge costs to getting out. In their attempts to gain electoral advantage, none of the three candidates has been entirely honest with the American people about the downsides of their particular exit strategy.

Rather than handing out more Pinocchios to the candidates, I will award a Geppetto checkmark to the general and the ambassador for the painful but honest conclusion that they have yet to spot any light at the end of the long Iraqi tunnel.