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NEW YORK (CBS News) ― CBS News anchor Katie Couric has asked the leading presidential candidates the same ten questions. Their answers to the question of: "What is the biggest mistake you've ever made?" will be broadcast on Dec. 5, 2007, on the CBS Evening News With Katie Couric.

Below are excerpts of some of the candidates' answers profiled in Wednesday's piece from the Primary Questions: Character, Leadership & the Candidates series. Check back later today for more of the candidates' responses.

RUDY GIULIANI

Katie Couric: What was the biggest mistake?

Giuliani: Well, I don't know the biggest mistake. I mean, I've had - made - made a number of mistakes. I know the one that comes to mind right away. And that's one, in not being able to anticipate the changes that were needed in child welfare and setting up the Administration for Children's Services enough. All of [a] sudden, this young girl, Elisa Izquierdo, was ... killed. She was killed in a brutal way. She had been in and out of the child welfare agencies. She had been on our radar screen and ... I hadn't fixed it in time. And I ... had time to do it. I could have done it in the time that I reformed the other agencies. And I felt terrible about this. And ... we made a very big reform based on it. But, I always felt if we had done that earlier, maybe just maybe we could have avoided her death, and maybe some other situations like that.

BARACK OBAMA

Couric: What is the biggest mistake you've ever made? And how did you recognize it? And what did you do to change course?

Obama: Well, the biggest mistake that I ever made was when I was a teenager. Because I got involved with drinking and trying drugs. I was being raised by a single mom and by my grandparents. And I've written about this ... in my first book. You know, I was frustrated and didn't have role models out there that made sense. And ... so I engaged in a lot of destructive behavior. I pulled out of it in my first couple of years of college. I started thinking outside of myself. I started thinking about people I met who were struggling a lot worse than I was. You know, I didn't come from a wealthy family, but it was a middle-class family. And I never had to worry about whether I had enough to eat. Or I never had to worry about whether I had a roof over my head. And so just becoming more aware of the tough times that other people were going through - and I remember having a conversation with somebody and them saying to me that "you know, it's not about you. It's about what you can do for other people." And something clicked in my head. And I got real serious after that and started applying myself at school. That's how I started becoming a student activist and then, ultimately, a community organizer. And, you know, that's probably the path that I've been taking ever since. That's how I ended up where I am today.

MITT ROMNEY

Couric: What's the biggest mistake you've ever made? How did you recognize it? And what did you do to change course?

Romney: Well, I think from the political perspective, the biggest mistake I made was believing that my personal disagreement with abortion, and my view that abortion was wrong, that somehow I could accommodate my personal view that abortion was wrong with a public view that other people should be able to make up their own mind and the government wouldn't play a role. That, in my view, was a mistake. It became apparent to me when a bill reached my desk that would have created new life and destroyed it, and I simply could not sign it. It was unacceptable to me to be associated with the destruction of human life, and I recognized that. I, therefore, wrote an op-ed piece in the Boston papers explaining that I was wrong in the past, that I'd made a mistake, and that I would, as a governor, come down on the side of life. And in the years I was governor of Massachusetts, on every bill that related to life, I came down on the side of life.

Couric: But that did haunt you for a while. And you were called a flip-flopper on that issue.

Romney: Yeah. There's no question people are gonna be very focused on any time an individual changes their view on an issue. But certainly people make mistakes in their life. I have. I will. I hope I keep learning from my mistakes. I'm only worried about people who make mistakes and don't admit them and persist in a wrong-headed course. And you see a lot of that in politics. I was wrong with regards to my first position on abortion. I recognized that when I became governor, and I have a record of showing where I came out.

Couric: Do you have an example of people who make mistakes and can't admit them?

Romney: Absolutely. But I'm not gonna tell you what they are (laughs). I don't want to be critical of other individuals and attack them. I think there are a lot of people who are wrong and may not know they're wrong, but there are probably some who recognize they're wrong but are unwilling to make the shift and acknowledge that they made a mistake.

HILLARY CLINTON

Couric: What is the biggest mistake you've ever made? How did you recognize it, and what did you do to change course?

Clinton: Well, I've made lots of mistakes. You know, I have to put my handling of health care among one of my biggest mistakes because it was so personally disappointing. But it was also such a tragic loss of time for so many Americans who needed health care, and we weren't able to deliver it. And I didn't handle it right. And I didn't know everything I know today about the best way of presenting it and trying to convince the Congress and the country to go along. And ... you know, I was upset about that for a long time because I was, you know, really unhappy with the mistakes I made and felt like they had contributed to the loss of an opportunity to provide health care for people.

Couric: You've talked about that on the campaign trail. But if you had to say specifically with dealing - if you had to say specifically in dealing with healthcare what it was that you did wrong, what would that be?

Clinton: I think it was a misunderstanding or perhaps a lack of understanding about what it took to get hard work done in Washington. And it appeared, if you looked at the polls, that everybody was for health care reform. But everybody was for it, in general, but not in specific, and I didn't spend enough time because, frankly, I was new to Washington and I didn't have the experience that I now have on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. So, I didn't spend the time that I should have in really listening to people in the Congress who understood how you get big change done in America. One of the reasons why I think I'm the best candidate this time is that I've had some of these experiences. I've had some of these tough knocks, and I've learned from them. And I now have this unique ability to understand what a White House can do and what a Congress can do and how, if you want to get something done, you've got to figure out a way to get people together.

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