Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama (right), and Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain (centre), shake hands at the start of the presidential debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY, on Wednesday. - AP

HEMPSTEAD, New York (AP):

Republican John McCain assailed Barack Obama's character Wednes-day night as he tried to distance himself from the unpopular President George W. Bush, hoping to turn the final presidential debate into a launching pad for a political comeback.

Behind in the polls going into the third presidential debate, McCain came out fighting and repeated to Obama's face some of the most negative campaign allegations about the Illinois senator. An unruffled Obama parried each charge, and levelled a few of his own.

No new proposals

Neither candidate brought new proposals for moving the country out of its deepening financial crisis, even though polls show voter economic anxieties far overshadow all other issues, even the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The nationally televised debate was the last opportunity for Americans to measure the credentials of the candidates in a side-by-side setting, offering McCain his best remaining chance to gain ground on Obama.

The 90-minute encounter, with the candidates seated at a round table at Hofstra University, was their third debate, and marked the beginning of a 20-day sprint to Election Day. Obama leads in the national polls and in surveys in many battleground states, an advantage built in the weeks since the nation stumbled into the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

With few exceptions, the campaign is being waged in states that voted Republican in 2004 - Virginia, Colorado, Iowa - and in many of them, Obama holds a lead in the polls.

McCain played the aggressor from the opening moments of the debate.