COLUMBUS — Ohio voters will look in two directions next year — backward and forward — as they try to decide whether Democratic President Barack Obama deserves re-election or that it’s time for a change.

Republicans like looking back. They’ve been polishing up their rear-view mirrors for months.

Democrats want voters to look ahead. If last week is an indication, they’re not using the “hope and change” rhetoric of Obama’s 2008 campaign.

Political scientist Mark Caleb Smith described what voters do with an incumbent president on the ballot.

“They look back and assess his work in office and they develop their own impression of whether or not their lives have improved or not during his tenure,” Smith, director of the Center for Political Studies at Cedarville University, said in an email.

“Voters also have to look forward and determine how things might play out in the future. Here, they have to compare the president they know to his opponent, about whom they can only make educated guesses.”

It’s easy to figure out why Republicans like the backward glance.

In Ohio, October unemployment was at 9 percent. It’s been that high or higher for six of 10 months this year. Since Obama took office, Ohio has lost about 95,000 jobs.

Obama and his allies can say that he inherited an economic mess from Republican President George W. Bush and that Obama has started to make things better.

“It Could Be Worse” doesn’t work as a campaign slogan, however.

“Ohio voters will be hard pressed to conclude that Obama’s tenure in office has been a success,” Smith said.

That’s why Democrats are looking ahead, partly with a strategy described by political scientist Staci Rhine of Wittenberg University in Springfield.

“A lot of people have run for re-election by scaring people,” said Rhine.

Last week Democrats tried to scare voters about former Massachusetts’ governor Mitt Romney.

Romney hasn’t won a single delegate but Democrats see him as Obama’s likely Republican opponent.

The Democratic National Committee launched a coordinated attack on Romney as a chronic, untrustworthy flip-flopper on key issues ranging from abortion to immigration to health care.

The battle plan included a 30-second TV attack ad in six markets, including Columbus.

Former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland used a Columbus press conference to join political surrogates across the country.

“Mitt Romney can’t even take a position on taking a position,” said Strickland.

This isn’t a new approach. It’s worked for both parties, said Rhine.

Democrat Bill Clinton in 1996 tried to scare voters about Republicans in general and House Speaker Newt Gingrich in particular, said Rhine.

“Look what those scary Republicans would do” was the successful Clinton mantra.

Republican George W. Bush used it against Democrat John Kerry in 2004, casting Kerry as a wind-surfing elitist unfit to lead a country engaged in two wars.

“It’s a scary world” worked for Bush, said Rhine.

The approach doesn’t always succeed. In 1980 Democrat Jimmy Carter portrayed Republican Ronald Reagan as a far-right extremist who might bomb Canada. Reagan dispelled those views by besting Carter in a Cleveland debate shortly before the election.

Reagan did it partly by asking this question:

“Are you better off than you were four years ago?”

Voters will ponder that question next year, but, if Democrats succeed, a second one also will get some attention:

“Who would make your future better — or worse?”

Contact this reporter at (614) 224-1608 or whershey@DaytonDailyNews.com.