John McCain v Barack Obama III
Updated on 16 October 2008
Watch extracts of the third and final US presidential debate.
"Senator Obama, I'm not George W Bush." Watch highlights from Republican John McCain's latest confrontation with his Democrat rival Barack Obama.
Snap polls showed Barack Obama to be the winner of the third and final presidential debate last night, in which the candidates clashed over the economy and other domestic issues.
A national CNN poll showed 58 per cent of viewers thought the Democratic presidential candidate trumped his rival, Republican John McCain. Only 31 per cent thought McCain put in the better performance.
An Ohio plumber became an unlikely star of the debate, with McCain talking directly to Joe Wurzelbacher, who was filmed at the weekend asking Obama whether he would lose out from the Democratic senator's tax plans.
McCain said Wurzelbacher "wants to buy the business that he has been in for all of these years, worked 10, 12 hours a day".
"Joe, I want to tell you, I'll not only help you buy that business that you worked your whole life for and be able - and I'll keep your taxes low and I'll provide available and affordable health care for you and your employees," said McCain.
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Obama responded by promising a tax cut for 95 percent of working Americans.
"I think tax policy is a major difference between Senator McCain and myself," he said. "And we both want to cut taxes, the difference is who we want to cut taxes for."
'We both want to cut taxes, the difference is who we want to cut taxes for.'Barack Obama
McCain tried to distance himself from the current Republican administration, telling Obama: "I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago."
After a slew of negative Republican campaign ads in recent weeks, McCain attacked Obama's relationship with "old washed-up terrorist" William Ayers, a former member of Weather Underground which bombed locations including the US Pentagon.
Obama said he was eight years old when Ayers, an anti-Vietnam-war protestor, "engaged in despicable acts with a radical domestic group".
"He is not involved in my campaign, he has never been involved in my campaign, and he will not advise me in the White House," Obama told the debate at Hofstra University, Long Island.
Vietnam veteran McCain used his closing statement to draw on his family's long-standing military history. "I've spent my entire life in the service of this nation and putting my country first," he said.
"As a long line of McCains that have served our country for a long time in war and in peace, it's been the great honour of my life, and I've been proud to serve."
'I've spent my entire life in the service of this nation and putting my country first.'John McCain
Obama talked instead of the need for a "fundamental change in the country".
"The policies of the last eight years and Washington's unwillingness to tackle the tough problems for decades has left us in the worst economic crisis since the great depression," he said.
McCain's described his controversial running mate Sarah Palin as "a role model to women" and "reformers all over America".
Obama steered clear of attacking the comparatively inexperienced Alaska governor, calling her "a capable politician who has, I think, excited the - a - base in the Republican party".
Americans go to the polls on Tuesday 4 November.
