It sounds like you would be fine if, after telling someone what the general welfare clause doesn’t mean, they asked you what it did mean.
Unfortunately Perry was not.
He covered it in his book. Refusing to answer a misleading question is an answer. Not answering when you say you aren’t going to answer is an answer. And you can see the bias of the reporter when they pull crap like posting a transcript where they repeat their question so they can leave an empty space for the candidate, as if the questioner gets to decide whether a guy should have answered his question better or not.