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The article focuses on two important topics of political discussions including policy framing and the U.S. Energy Security which was discussed at Annual Convention for the American Political Science Association held on September 1-4, 2011 at Seattle, Washington. It mentions positive and negative impacts of energy security under popular and political perceptions.

Energy policy in the United States has seen periods of popularity and periods of neglect. After the energy crises in the 1970s, particular strains of concern and their respective policy prescriptions emerged among political science and energy scholars. Unfortunately, these concerns and prescriptions were not heard and implemented by policymakers. Nor were they heeded years later when, likely as a result, energy issues reemerged in the 1990s and again at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Each time, the crises (actual or perceived) were intimately related to conditions abroad drawing a clear link between domestic energy supply and US foreign policy. This paper builds upon years of commentary criticizing political leaders for not heeding past recommendations, looking specifically at the role of Congress. The paper analyzes the content of congressional hearings on the topic of energy security (2000 to 2002) to determine what policy options were or were not debated and how far we were from implementing more "effective" energy security policies. Preliminary results suggest that discussions were generally on the right track, but failed to adequately consider domestic efforts to increase energy efficiency and reduce energy consumption and intensity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]