Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. Barack Obama faced off in their third and final presidential debate Wednesday, confronting each other on recent personal attacks as well as discussing a slew of economic and domestic issues.

The 90-minute encounter took place at Hofstra University in Hempstead.

Early focus on differing economic plans drifted into a confrontation on recent personal attacks from inside and outside the campaigns. McCain questioned Obama on his relationship with William Ayers as well as ACORN. Obama defended himself on each charge and pushed McCain on running "100 percent negative ads."

Later, McCain tried to distance himself from the Bush administration.

"Sen. Obama, I am not President Bush," he said. "You wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago."

Obama countered by again accusing McCain of supporting Bush the majority of the time.

"If I've occasionally mistaken your policies for George Bush's policies, it's because on the core economic issues that matter to the American people - on tax policy, on energy policy, on spending priorities - you have been a vigorous supporter of President Bush," said Obama.

In McCain's closing statement, he said America needs a new direction. Obama also touched on that theme, saying the biggest risk for the country right now would be to adopt the same failed policies and politics of the last eight years.

Check out our live blog from the debate at Blogs 12 Long Island and Twitter.

The entire debate at Hofstra, with 'Talk to 12' viewer comments, can be seen on-demand in the iO Extra category of News 12 Interactive, Channel 612 on your iO digital cable box.

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Hofstra University