  We address the issue of electromagnetic pulsar spindown by combining our
experience from the two limiting idealized cases which have been studied in
great extent in the past: that of an aligned rotator where ideal MHD conditions
apply, and that of a misaligned rotator in vacuum. We construct a spindown
formula that takes into account the misalignment of the magnetic and rotation
axes, and the magnetospheric particle acceleration gaps. We show that near the
death line aligned rotators spin down much slower than orthogonal ones. In
order to test this approach, we use a simple Monte Carlo method to simulate the
evolution of pulsars and find a good fit to the observed pulsar distribution in
the P-Pdot diagram without invoking magnetic field decay. Our model may also
account for individual pulsars spinning down with braking index n < 3, by
allowing the corotating part of the magnetosphere to end inside the light
cylinder. We discuss the role of magnetic reconnection in determining the
pulsar braking index. We show, however, that n ~ 3 remains a good approximation
for the pulsar population as a whole. Moreover, we predict that pulsars near
the death line have braking index values n > 3, and that the older pulsar
population has preferentially smaller magnetic inclination angles. We discuss
possible signatures of such alignment in the existing pulsar data.
