Sen. Barack Obama, in a video message yesterday, officially declined to take the public financing route in order to fund his general election campaign for president. Under the public financing plan, Obama would have received $84 million for his campaign but has instead chosen to rely on his enormous bank of small donors and supporters to fund his presidential bid.

By choosing the private donation route, Obama could and likely will raise three to four times the amount he would have received from public financing, giving him the ability to drastically change the political landscape in terms of advertising and promotion. This is extremely critical for a candidate that is not well-known to the general public, and needs to advertise heavily in order to get his message out to the American people.

Here is where this move can really benefit Obama, not in terms of money raised, but in terms of crippling his opponent.

The McCain campaign have now completely shot themselves in the foot by attacking Barack Obama on this decision saying that Barack Obama:

“has revealed himself to be just another typical politician who will do and say whatever is most expedient for Barack Obama.”

This leaves John McCain in a position that hurts him no matter which way he goes. On one hand, he can keep his word and take the public financing, which puts him at an extreme disadvantage in the race. Or, he can fore go the public financing as well and then become exactly what he is attacking Obama for being, “a typical politician”.

McCain has proven recently that his fundraising efforts can in no way compare to that of Obama’s. Obama has been able to build a network through the web that literally fund raises for him, something that McCain is nowhere near achieving. This would mean that McCain will then have to spend a great deal of time fundraising, which would ultimately stiffen his message.

Obama has expressed his complaints with the public financing system recently by saying:

“It’s not an easy decision, and especially because I support a robust system of public financing of elections,” Obama told supporters in a video message Thursday. “But the public financing of presidential elections as it exists today is broken, and we face opponents who’ve become masters at gaming this broken system.”

While the McCain campaign continues to attack Obama for not keeping his word on using the public system, his actual statement was that both candidates would need to agree to the terms, and clearly Obama does not agree with the terms of the public financing system.

The decision to fore go public financing by Obama, while attracting intense criticism, I believe will ultimately prove to be an extremely wise move on his part, and may be the deciding factor in him achieving the ultimate goal of White House victory.