There's an old joke that goes: Why did the Canadian cross the road? Answer: To get to the middle of the road. Likewise (so they say) if you cut the average Canadian open you would find two words engraved on his or her heart. One would be "moderate." The other would be "nice."

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who was four months short of 10 years in office when he was swept out of power in Monday's election, was a moderate right-wing politician, although he pretended to be a hard right one. Six of his 10 budgets were in deficit, and he ended up adding $150 billion to Canada's national debt. Even when faced with a global recession, that's not what hard-right politicians do.

Similarly, the New Democratic Party (NDP) is a very moderate left-wing party by anybody's standards (except those of Americans) — and Justin Trudeau's Liberals have always believed that they owned the middle of the road. The 78-day election campaign, which was a tight three-horse race until the last couple of weeks, was not about ideology at all. It was about political style.