Sometimes the little things bother me more than the big ones. For instance, I’m still scratching my head about some of the comments President Bush made at his news conference Tuesday.

And it’s beyond me why Bush’s handlers allowed him to wear a tie that reflected all types of different patterns on television. Somebody isn’t paying attention to the details.

In terms of his comments, the first that bothers me was his refusal to answer a seemingly simple question: Why has he decided that he would only appear before the commission with Vice President Dick Cheney at his side?

“It’s a good chance for both of us to answer questions that the 9-11 Commission is looking forward to asking us, and I’m looking forward to answering them,” Bush said.

Hello. The question was why with Cheney? It seems odd the president of the United States would only answer questions of this import — and in a private, not a public session — with his vice president next to him. It’s not that he didn’t hear the question. The reporter followed up and got the same answer.

The appearance is that the president doesn’t have confidence to go before the commission without the man put there to mind him, Cheney. Is that the impression the White House wants to portray in an election year? I don’t get it.

But the most awkward moment of the news conference came when Bush was asked what his biggest mistake was since Sept. 11. He seemed stumped. My guess is that he was being super-cautious, afraid that to admit any mistake would give his opponents ammunition against him in the campaign.

OK, that’s understandable. But there was not a trace of grace or humor is his response. Can you imagine how a John Kennedy or a Bill Clinton would have hit a question like that out of the ballpark? A touch of self-deprecation, a tour de force to explain the workings of presidential decision-making.

Or, maybe more in character for Bush, a macho answer, such as: Given the tough problems our country faces, I just don’t have the time or the inclination to wallow in second-guessing myself. They’ll be plenty of time for the historians to decide what we’ve done right and what we’ve done wrong. We all know where the buck stops. I’m spending every waking moment trying to figure out how to make the effort in Iraq successful, trying to find a solution to peace between Israelis and the Palestinians, making sure we don’t have another 9-11, trying to get this economy moving at full force again.

But Bush froze. What’s going on here?

Finally, I have the same problem with one of Bush’s top officials, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. Appearing before the 9-11 Commission last week, she described the Aug. 6, 2001, briefing Bush received that warned Osama bin Laden could attack inside the country.

Rice, who uses words with great precision, said the briefing was historical, just reciting things that bin Laden had said in the past. Rice later interrupted to say the briefing did not predict a Sept. 11 attack with hijacked commercial jetliners.

But she ignored what the brief actually said. That bothers me. The brief wasn’t just historical, even if it did not predict what was going to happen. It said there might be a real problem in the near future at home. The question the commission must ask is why Rice — and Bush — didn’t alert key officials such as the acting director of the FBI, the secretary of transportation and the head of the Federal Aviation Administration.

My point is not to second-guess Rice. The view always looks much clearer in hindsight.

But why was this precise speaker so imprecise on this matter? Many of her explanations seem plausible. But dismissing the Aug. 6 presidential brief as “historical” is not.

Maybe I ought to spend more time on the big picture. But I’ve learned over the years that if you can’t get the little things right you probably will flub the big ones as well.