“Harmony is easily withheld.”

That’s a line from a profile of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in the January 2011 issue of The Atlantic magazine. Titled “Strict Obstructionist,” the piece looks at McConnell’s political strategy of undermining support for President Barack Obama’s initiatives by slowly and methodically turning every issue into a political issue. Obama famously had campaigned on a platform of moving beyond politics as usual.

Here’s what author Joshua Green wrote about McConnell:

Obama could not evolve into a post-partisan leader, because McConnell wouldn’t let him. He pegged Obama as either too narcissistic or too naive to recognize that his promise of a harmonious new age was beyond his capacity to deliver. Harmony is easily withheld.

I bring this up because there’s an interesting parallel to the 2012 mayoral election and the State of the City address delivered Thursday by Peter Carlisle.

In the speech, Carlisle enumerated three things “happening now in the city that will leave Honolulu a better place for the next generation.” The last item on his list: “We are ending politics as usual and increasing citizen engagement.” Previously, he talked about how the creation of HART would keep politics out of rail.

Those are promises that Carlisle won’t be able to keep.

Rail is a political issue. Most rail stories between now and the election will have a political dimension.

As much as anything else, that’s what the entry of anti-rail former Gov. Ben Cayetano into the race has done. The third candidate, former Acting Mayor Kirk Caldwell, has tried to draw distinctions between himself and Carlisle when it comes to rail, and they’re on the same side. Cayetano is promising to kill the project. It is going to be difficult over the next months to talk about rail without talking about the mayor’s race.

Carlisle says in one breath that he’s going to end politics as usual. But on Thursday, his actions told a different story. After giving his State of the City speech, he walked across the street from Honolulu Hale to the lawn of the state library so as not as to be on city property. There candidate Carlisle held a press conference and talked about about how he’s going to get more involved in selling the rail project. He said he doesn’t think that HART has done an adequate job of convincing people what the benefits are.

So Carlisle himself is saying that he’s going to treat rail as a political issue.

Cayetano at his press conference Thursday ridiculed Carlisle’s claim. He pointed out that the city has spent at least $5 million on rail PR. He cited a blog that he wouldn’t name as his source, while looking directly at me when he said it. The source was Civil Beat.

It’s impossible for Carlisle to promise to end politics as usual and simultaneously promise to take a more active role in selling rail in an election year.