Hellenic Business

From the very start, Mitt Romney’s campaign was premised on the belief that the economy’s struggles would make President Obama politically vulnerable. Grim economic statistics, the assumption went, would make Mr. Romney’s argument for him.

There is little evidence that strategy is working, at least not to the degree that Mr. Romney had hoped. Polls show voters growing somewhat more optimistic — and increasingly willing to trust the president as much as they do Mr. Romney on jobs and the economy.

With the race now in the home stretch and the debates starting on Wednesday, Mr. Romney’s campaign appears to be shifting course, abandoning its hope of making the election a referendum on Mr. Obama’s jobs record.

Instead, Mr. Romney intends to hit the White House with a series of arguments — on energy, health care, taxes, spending and a more direct attack on Mr. Obama’s foreign policy record — in an effort to draw sharper distinctions between the candidates and to give voters a choice about who can best change Washington.

In an effort to move beyond the economic argument, Mr. Romney accused Mr. Obama on Monday of major foreign policy failures in a column published in The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Romney said the president had allowed the nation’s influence to atrophy by “stepping away” from America’s allies.

“Amid this upheaval, our country seems to be at the mercy of events rather than shaping them,” Mr. Romney wrote. “We’re not moving them in a direction that protects our people or our allies. And that’s dangerous.”

The Republican campaign also hopes to seize on concerns about the nation’s growing debt amid polling results that suggest Mr. Romney retains a sizable edge over the president regarding who will rein in spending in Washington.

Mr. Romney’s campaign officials say they are simply broadening their message that the last four years have been so disappointing that the nation needs a new direction.

“Our message is very clear, which is we cannot afford four more years like the last four years, and we need a real recovery,” Ed Gillespie, a senior adviser to Mr. Romney, said after briefing reporters on Monday morning. “Whether it’s job creation, health care, energy or debt, the message is we cannot afford four more years like the last four years. We know this resonates with voters.”

Democrats have been trying to turn the 2012 race into a “choice” election in which the policies and personalities of both candidates are compared side by side, and the focus is not the current state of the economy. And while it is too soon to know if an multipronged strategy will hurt Mr. Obama’s chances, the election is now being fought on the president’s preferred ground.

“They had no choice but to move on to our playing field,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. “When they go to the choice argument, they are stuck.”

When Mr. Romney announced his candidacy in the summer of 2011, his top advisers — in particular his senior strategist, Stuart Stevens — waved aside attempts by Democrats to demonize Mr. Romney as a wealthy corporate raider who was out of touch with middle-class voters.

Mr. Stevens and other top aides repeatedly said they believed that the country’s economic problems would keep voters’ attention focused squarely on the president. Mr. Romney embraced that approach from the beginning. In a YouTube video announcing his candidacy, Mr. Romney said simply, “President Obama’s policies have failed.”

Now, some top aides inside Mr. Romney’s campaign headquarters in Boston fear their simple message has become muddled. One adviser said last week that Mr. Obama’s campaign motto “Forward” has been more effective that Mr. Romney’s “Believe in America.”

On Friday, the federal government will issue its jobs report for September, including an updated estimate of unemployment. Mr. Romney has seized on weak jobs reports to argue that Mr. Obama has been unable to repair the economy.

But polls suggest that argument has not worked as Mr. Romney had hoped. A national New York Times/CBS News poll in mid-September found that Mr. Obama had all but erased Mr. Romney’s lead on handling the economy. The poll, and others since, indicate that voters increasingly believe the country is headed in the right direction.

Aides stress that Mr. Romney will continue to press the economic case against the president. But rather than focusing on Mr. Obama, they plan to stress that voters need to make a choice between two different visions of the world. In the briefing with reporters on Monday, the aides repeated the word “choice” more than a dozen times.

They said the another-four-years approach will provide the campaign an opportunity to demonstrate that Mr. Romney is the better choice, and has a better plan for America when it comes to the economy, foreign policy, health care and energy.

“It’s important for us to lay out the important contrast, the important choice these voters face, on the issues they care about,” said Kevin Madden, a spokesman and senior adviser to the campaign.

The New York Times