As they say in the biz, the optics of President Obama enjoying an exhibition game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cuban national team while a terrorist attack unfolded in Belgium were awful.

But even the horrific strike against Brussels would not deter the president from having a good time. He was just too busy making history to take time to acknowledge the fact that western civilization is under assault.

The sports network ESPN interviewed the president during the game and he was asked directly whether going to a ballgame in the aftermath of the Brussels attack was proper. Read the president's response carefully:

President Barack Obama pushed back on criticism from Republican presidential candidates regarding his decision to remain in Cuba in wake of tragic terrorist attacks in Brussels, suggesting that doing so would have played into the terrorists’ hands.

“It’s always a challenge when you have a terrorist attack anywhere in the world, particularly in this age of 24/7 news coverage,” Obama told ESPN at the top of the third inning in a historic baseball game in Havana between Major League Baseball’s Tampa Bay Rays and the Cuban national team. “You want to be respectful and understand the gravity of the situation, but the whole premise of terrorism is to try to disrupt people’s ordinary lives.”

I hate to break it to the president of the United States, the most powerful leader in the world, but there is nothing "ordinary" about his life - at least, there shouldn't be. People expect the president's normal schedule to be disrupted when there's an attack like the one that occurred in Brussels. Some of the president's opponents were calling on him to go to Belgium but I'm not sure that would have been necessary or even desirable.

But others called upon the president to leave Cuba immediately and come home. That would seem to me to be the least he could have done to acknowledge the gravity of the situation. There is plenty of precedent for it. All that was missing was a president who believed terrorism was more important than a baseball game.

The surreality of the president doing the wave with Raul Castro while authorities were picking up body parts at the Brussels airport only added to the notion that the president is not serious about combatting terrorism.

Ultimately, it's all about him - his agenda, his history making, his legacy. That's why there's no room in his day for the truly important things that matter to the American people.