McCain Sharply Criticizes Bush's Policies as 'Abuse of Power'

In his most forceful effort yet to distance himself from President Bush, John McCain slammed the current administration's policies and chastised Bush for increasing the debt burden for future generations, failing to fund expanding Medicare and abusing executive powers.

In the interview, which was published Thursday in The Washington Times, McCain makes a bold effort to undermine Barack Obama's theme of linking him to the Bush administration, whose unpopularity has diminished the GOP brand and endangered several Republican lawmakers' re-election.

"We just let things get completely out of hand," McCain said of his own party's rule in the past eight years.

"Spending, the conduct of the war in Iraq for years, growth in the size of government, larger than any time since the Great Society, laying a $10 trillion debt on future generations of America, owing $500 billion to China, obviously, failure to both enforce and modernize the [financial] regulatory agencies...failure to address the issue of climate change seriously," McCain told the Washington Times aboard his campaign plane en route from New Hampshire to Ohio.