It turns out it was neither. As the results of Tuesday's election make clear, 1994 was no fluke: something profound and irrevocable has changed in American political culture. But it is neither so frightening nor so alien to Canadian values as we are so often informed. Bill Clinton might celebrate it as the triumph of the "vital centre" in American politics, but in truth the election reflected not so much the triumph of centrism as of convergence.

It is a phenomenon that is not restricted to the United States, but now defines the politics of most developed countries: a convergence of left and right, an emerging consensus on the role of government in the wake of the post-war welfare state. For all Clinton's careful tacking about, it is not so much a matter of hugging the centre -- wherever the centre happens to be -- if by that is meant simply splitting the difference between left and right on every issue. Rather, convergence means the combination of the two, drawing from left and right as appropriate in equal measure. Which is to say, it marks the obsolescence of these twin pillars of political orthodoxy.

Respected as a tactician, reviled as an opportunist, the truth is that Clinton's own beliefs are closely rooted in this consensus, as a "New Democrat" and the motive force behind the Democratic Leadership Council, the group that gave the party new direction in the 1980s, as it tried to answer the Republican critique of the welfare state. Yet in his first years in office, he seemed hard pressed to give this philosophy coherence. At times he seemed so gifted at crafting his message that he had forgotten what he had to say.

By 1994, little remained of the promises of his first campaign, politics and circumstances having forced him to jettison both the most cynical -- the middle-class tax cut -- and the most ambitious: health care reform. So long as Congress was divided between Democrats and Republicans, Clinton seemed to inhabit a no-man's-land between. People demanded to know, was he liberal or conservative, a man of the left or right? The ambiguity of his private morals came to be attached to his public principles.

Only with the Republican seizure of both houses of Congress did the opportunity present itself to define himself politically. It is not true to say that he simply co-opted Republic policies, from welfare to crime to the budget deficit. These had been a part of his platform from the beginning. But in counterpoint to the Republicans' more all-embracing campaign to reduce the size and intrusiveness of government, Clinton offered a more surgical approach. Together, the two seem to have stumbled into synch with the American voter. Clinton may be the first two-term Democratic President since Franklin Roosevelt, but the Republicans can equally celebrate their first back-to-back majorities in the House since 1930.

What is this new consensus? It is a position that respects the market economy, for the choices it offers consumers and the efficiency it forces upon producers. Yet it respects also the role of government, as the arbiter of fairness, the provider of public goods, the defender of the downtrodden. It combines a prudent approach to public finance with a targeting of scarce resources to those most in need. In the latter half of Clinton's first term, it has resulted in the expansion of free trade, reduction in the budget deficit, maintenance of low and stable inflation, and welfare reform.

Yet this has been combined with incremental progress in health care reform, as well as improvements in child care and education. Notably, Clinton has also discovered the bully pulpit value of the presidency, addressing the cultural confusion that is perhaps more pressing on Americans' minds than elsewhere. Perhaps that expresses the essence of the new consensus: in the waning days of the twentieth century, the public wants its elected representatives to do two things: Manage less, and lead more.