Tonight’s GOP town hall debate is off to a good start. Anderson Cooper is pressing Ted Cruz on a number of points—his plan to monitor Muslim neighborhoods, his insistence that “carpet bombing” ISIS will not result in enormous civilian casualties, and his path to the nomination, among others—and Cruz has spent most of the evening bobbing and weaving to avoid answering Cooper’s questions. But the most difficult question came from an audience member: What’s your biggest weakness?
Cruz began on the right note, by joking about how most people answer that question with total bullshit. In job interviews, he said, people often say that their biggest weakness is that they work too hard! Cruz chuckled and said he wasn’t going to do that. And then he said his biggest weakness is that he’s so driven to succeed.
Cruz took a long time getting to the point, too. He began by talking about how he toured the country reciting the Constitution, which he had memorized, as a child. Cruz ultimately ended with something relatively substantive, saying that he’s learned that there are consequences to being driven and that he should have “pulled back in some circumstances” in which he “[stepped] on some toes.” Cruz’s answer can be seen at the 3:30 mark below: