Prison politics

It’s hard to see how President Obama and Congress can avoid housing some of the 240 remaining Guantánamo Bay detainees in U.S. prisons if the controversial center is to be closed by January.

Democrats balked Wednesday at including funds in a spending bill to close the prison camp, mostly out of fear the detainees could end up in their home states.

Opposition was not limited to conservative Democrats in red states, either. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who could face a tough reelection battle in 2010, told reporters on Tuesday he’s opposed to housing detainees in U.S. prisons.

Only six Democrats voted to keep the funds in the spending bill. While members had the blessing of their leaders and the White House to vote against the funds, the 90-6 vote still hints at the degree to which politicians are skittish over the issue. They’re worried that a vote to fund Guantánamo’s closure will be portrayed as a vote to put suspected terrorists on American soil.

The not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) spirit exhibited by some lawmakers is a major problem for Obama.

Convincing foreign countries to accept all of the 240 prisoners left in Cuba is hardly likely. Why should France, Germany or Poland accept prisoners U.S. lawmakers see as too dangerous to house in the United States? So far France has agreed to take one prisoner, as has Great Britain.

Missing the timeline would greatly disappoint Obama supporters while providing ammunition to critics that he has failed to bring promised change to Washington. Obama announced the timeline for closing Guantánamo just two days after his inauguration, in a move intended to signal a dramatic break from a past era.

Closing Guantánamo, Obama said at the time, would “restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great even in the midst of war, even in dealing with terrorism.”

Obama has plenty of time to hit this target, but only if he can get recalcitrant lawmakers to support housing some of the prisoners in their states.

The next step will be to offer a plan on what to do with the detainees, something Obama’s rival for the presidency, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), said he should have done in the first place.

Unlike other Republicans, McCain supports closing Guantánamo, but told CNN’s Larry King in January that Obama’s decision was hasty. The easy part, he said, is to say you’re closing Guantánamo, “because then you’re going to run into a NIMBY problem here in the United States of America.”

Many members of Congress punt on how to resolve this matter, dodging the question by saying Obama needs to come up with a plan. Obama has said the problems that land on his desk are tough ones, noting they wouldn’t be there if they were easy.

Closing Guantánamo is no exception.