I lost a lot of hair trying to make a simple 3 column layout where the middle column would scale to the width of the window and could consist of multiple DIVs in a vertical row, all of the same width. AKA "baby's first blog" layout. Something that should have been one of the design cases for CSS.
I cannot. They no longer exist. This was 14 years ago. I left web development shortly afterwards.
For your example, horizontal alignment was easy. One container div with a width of 99.9% and a left/right margin of auto. Inside you place three divs (columns) with a width of 33.3% and float left. Add another div at the end to clear the float.
Vertical alignment required a "hack."
http://www.greywyvern.com/code/min-height-hack
And to be clear, I never called it "elegant." I simply suggested it was possible.
Should CSS have been better? Sure. But, by that measure, it still sucks today.