Professor Allan J. Lichtman (American University, Washington, D.C.) presents a model developed in 1981 for predicting the popular-vote winners of American presidential elections. The model worked accurately when applied retrospectively to every U. S. presidential election from 1860 to 1968, as well as when it was used to forecast presidential winners from 1984 through 2004. The author states that presidential campaigns should be based on issues and ideas important to the functioning of a democracy as set out in the U.S. Constitution. The majority of today’s political campaigns, however, focus on negative ads about opponents and on pointless debates with pre-written responses that ultimately do not affect an election’s outcome.