‘Distant’ vs ‘Distance’

It will be a bad day if you cannot differentiate which is correct and which is wrong between the two.






It is best to distant yourself, keep busy with your own life and try not to indulge in fantasising about her.

Do you notice anything wrong with the above sentence which is taken from a popular national English daily?

What about the following one which is taken from the same daily a few days later?

The American economic free fall played havoc with John McCain’s campaign, as he tries to distance himself from the unpopular Bush administration and walk away from his own history as a champion of government deregulation.

‘Distant’ is an adjective while ‘distance’ is a noun which can, however, be used as a verb.

By now, you should have realized that the first sentence is wrong as ‘to distant yourself’ therein should have been ‘to distance yourself’ as used in the second sentence picked from the same newspaper.

No endeavor is worse than that which is not attempted.
-- Mexican Proverb