During Watergate, Deep Throat told The Washington Post's Bob Woodward to follow the money.

In Ohio these days, that's next to impossible.

Thus, it is time to remove limits on campaign contributions.

That last sentence couldn't have been typed with these fingers? Constant readers -- both of them -- might recall my 1990s fervor for limits as the only way to eliminate Ohio's rampant pay-to- play politics and diminish perceptions of undue influence by wealthy contributors.

But now I beg to differ with the hypocrite in the mirror. The noble 1996 campaign-finance law is a failure. The political parties and candidates and interest groups have made a mockery of it.

I long for the days I once lamented, when any sugar daddy with a million dollars could give it to a candidate.

At least then we could follow the money.

Oh sure, games were played, including the gambit pulled by former Gov. Richard F. Celeste. After getting beat by incumbent Republican Gov. James A. Rhodes in 1978, Celeste hankered for another shot at governor.

But in order to be considered a serious contender for the 1982 Democratic nomination against front-runner William J. Brown, then the attorney general, Celeste knew he needed to show substantial cash in a campaign account.

So, he coaxed a half-dozen of his Cleveland pals to go to the bank and borrow money. He then filed a campaign-finance report showing $400,000 on hand. Heads turned. Celeste suddenly was viable.

A day after the report was filed, Celeste paid back the contributors who had borrowed money, nearly draining his campaign account. Nobody was the wiser until months later when Celeste filed his next report. By then, campaign cash wasn't a problem.

It was a slick trick, but at least it was fully disclosed and Ohioans knew where the money came from. Without the ability to collect large sums of money from individual campaign contributors, Republican George V. Voinovich probably wouldn't have been elected governor in 1990. He entered the race nearly $2 million behind Anthony J. Celebrezze, the Democratic nominee.

But Voinovich quickly caught up, thanks to wealthy donors. In 1990, he collected at least 19 contributions of $25,000 or more each, including four $100,000 donations from businessmen. All of it was disclosed. Anyone who wanted to track whether big givers later got special treatment could do so.

Today, with individuals and political action committees limited to giving state candidates $2,500 per election cycle, Timothy F. Hagan, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, has no chance of catching Gov. Bob Taft's 42-to-1 money lead.

Instead of taking the money out of politics and eliminating the potentially corrupting influence of big contributions, the 1996 law merely caused money to be channeled into hard-to-track accounts.

Hence, we have Taft offering seats in his box for a Buckeyes football game in exchange for $50,000 contributions to a secret state GOP operating fund. And we have special-interest groups, which once gave generously and openly to candidates, now funding their own secret and woefully unregulated campaign committees to affect the outcome of elections.

Individual and PAC contributions that once went directly and openly to candidates are now being laundered through county parties, which, unlike the state parties, are not required by law to disclose their donors' occupations or places of employment.

Last year, five Columbus financial brokers collectively doing millions of dollars worth of business with Republican State Treasurer Joseph T. Deters' office each gave the Hamilton County Republican Party between $12,500 and $25,000. The county party funneled more than $300,000 into Deters' campaign.

If a Dispatch reporter had not recognized the five names and wondered why Columbus brokers were giving money to a Cincinnati party, any hint of an alleged quid pro quo between them and Deters' campaign might never have been uncovered.

The same is true with $8,700 in donations from nursing-home operators that were bundled with other contributions and funneled by the Montgomery County Republican Party into state Auditor Jim Petro's campaign for attorney general. As a candidate for attorney general, Petro is legally prohibited from accepting donations from the nursing-home industry, which he would regulate.

Until a sharp-eyed reporter from the Dayton Daily News recognized the unidentified contributors as nursing-home operators, there was no move by the Petro campaign to return the money.

The campaign reform of 1996 wrongly has spurred creative and legal ways to conceal sources of contributions to candidates and parties. The old way, while often grotesquely excessive, was better. At least we could follow the money.

The solution: Let individuals and PACs contribute any amount to a candidate and then require the candidate to publicly report the contributions within a day.

I can't believe I just wrote that.

Joe Hallett is senior editor at The Dispatch.