DANA BASH, CNN: I want to read to you a description, a Harvard law graduate, 40 something years old, two young daughters, in the senate for only two years who thinks he can be president. I could be describing you; I could be describing Barack Obama.



SEN. TED CRUZ: True enough, but I think there are a lot more notable differences between us than the similarities.



DANA BASH: That is true, but, you know, one of the key things that we're already hearing is you don't have a lot of experience when it comes to being in federal office or being in office at all and this you're, you know, too young and too inexperienced for the job.



TED CRUZ: Dana, I think there are two sharp distinctions between where I am today and where Barack Obama was when he launched his campaign. Number one, in his time in the senate he had basically been a back bencher. He had not been leading on any issues. In my time in the Senate you can accuse me of being a lot of things but a back bencher is not one of them.



DANA BASH: That may be true, but the big criticism of President Obama especially as the years have gone on is he didn't have any experience in an executive function, he didn't run any organization and the same can be said about you. What experience do you have to be commander in chief of the United States military, for example?



TED CRUZ: Well, unlike Barack Obama, I was not a community organizer before I was elected to the senate. I spent 5 1/2 years as the solicitor general of Texas, the chief lawyer for Texas in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. I supervised and led every year before the state of Texas in a 4,000 agency with over 700 lawyers.



Over the course of 5 1/2 years over and over again Texas led the nation defending conservative principles and winning.