Ted Cruz would no doubt agree with much of your post:
“I was a young man in my 20s, and I had enjoyed a lot of success,” Cruz said, “Almost everything I’d laid my hands to had gone well. And I was far too cocky for my own good.”
At the end of the successful campaign, he said, “I desperately wanted to have a senior job in the White House. Frankly, I wanted to be … Michael J. Fox’s character in ‘The American President,’ a young, idealistic staffer in the Oval Office, saying, ‘Mr. President, do the right thing.’”
“And that didn’t happen, and it became clear it wasn’t going to happen because I had burned too many bridges,” Cruz continued. He went on to say that in retrospect, he is grateful he didn’t get the job, because he never would have been able to run his grassroots 2012 Senate campaign if he hadn’t learned a little humility. “You can’t run a grassroots campaign if you’re an arrogant little snob,” he said. “I needed to get my teeth kicked in.”
Your above comment ties in nicely with the rest of the story:
“The Bush vet goes on: “I don’t know anyone who had a decent relationship with Cruz.” And when Bush became president, his top campaign aides agreed Cruz should not be offered a job in the White House. “No one wanted to work with him,” this source remembers. “George W. Bush couldn’t stand the guy.” This person adds, “It’s a real quandary for Bush campaign people: Trump versus Cruz, who to vote for? And it would be a big quandary even if it’s Cruz versus Hillary Clinton. That’s how much they cannot stand him.”
He seems to have really liked that movie “American President.” He used quotes from it to attack Trump.