When the Democratic presidential candidate reneged on his pledge to take public financing for the general election, campaign watchdog groups and newspaper editorialists pounced. They all hoped he would help salvage a broken campaign finance system.

Instead, he created a whole new one, and he destined the current system of public financing to the trash heap.

On Sunday, Obama’s campaign announced he had raised more than US$150 million in September alone, a previously unimaginable fundraising rate of US$5 million a day. Republican rival John McCain, who chose to participate in the public system, has been limited by law to spending only US$84 million in September and October.

At Obama’s clip, his fundraising will easily surpass the US$650 million total spent by President George W. Bush and his Democratic opponent, John Kerry, combined in 2004. Indeed, by using sophisticated new social networking tools to reach legions of small donors, Obama has already exceeded the forecasts of some campaign finance seers who two years ago were predicting the two parties’ nominees would each spend about US$500 million.

The extraordinary sum vindicated Obama’s decision. It also made a public finance system born after the excesses of the Watergate era look decidedly quaint.

“People will look back at 2008 as the year that Barack Obama once and for all destroyed public financing as we know it,” said Todd Harris, a Republican strategist who worked on McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign. “It will be very difficult four years from now for any candidate to make the case that they should participate in public financing given the obvious financial advantage that Obama has received by opting out.”

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