It really wasn't in recent weeks, as Barack Obama and John McCain sparred over Iraq, Afghanistan and more, especially around the time that Obama was getting ready to go on his overseas trip.

Now that Congress has been unable to make any headway on the issue, the field is clear during August for the two candidates to slug it out.

Obama on Monday said he would pull oil out of US emergency reserves and use that to increase supply and bring down prices.

That plan has been floated before in the Congress, but never got off the ground this summer, as Democrats bitterly fought with Republicans on the overall issue of high oil and gas prices.

(We should also note that Obama had previously opposed such a move.)

McCain meanwhile echoed a call of some GOP lawmakers in the Congress, that the House and Senate should be spending their August working and not on a five week break.

"I call on Senator Obama to call on Congress to come back into town and come back to work, come off their recess, come off their vacation and address this energy challenge to America and do not leave until we do," McCain said.

Obama also repeated his weekend chatter that he would accept some new offshore oil exploration, but only if it were packaged with a broader legislative energy measure, that included work on solar, wind and other renewable fuels.

Here is the rub for Democrats right now. As a series of polls issued last week by Quinnipiac University showed, more Americans are now in favor of increased domestic drilling as a way to ease our current energy troubles.

At the same time, a huge majority of those surveyed in the key states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida, when given a choice, picked renewable fuels as the one solution they would endorse.

It wasn't close. Renewable fuels got over 50% in all three states. Drilling was under 20% in all three.

That probably makes some Democrats say there's no reason they should think about drilling more at this point in time, because what the voters want is something new.

Obama's latest TV ad on energy accuses McCain of being "in the pocket of Big Oil," which is pretty standard campaign trail fare for Democrats when they go after the GOP.

One part of Obama's plan would give families a $1,000 tax break, paid for by a windfall profits tax on the oil industry.

Right now, such a plan has little chance of succeeding. But give the Democrats a big win in November at all levels, and that could always change.

We'll see which candidate gets the best of the other on energy this week.