Its hard to call Barack Obama a Burkean conservative. This is because Burkean conservatism or paleoconservatism is very much tied up with the preserving the British style of government. This sort of conservatism entails a support for preserving the Church of England, the aristocracy and the monarchy. And since the American Constitution was based on abstract ideas from John Locke and Montesquieu, such as separation of powers, equality under the law and representative government and the bill of rights, it would be anathema to anything Burke stood for.

Remember that Burke was in some ways quite inconsistent for supporting the American but not the French Revolution. Even though Edmund Burke claimed the American revolutionaries were breaking off the yoke of colonialism by making their arguments based on appealing to the ancient liberties of the freeborn Englishmen found in Magna Carta and the Habeas Corpus Act, the type of ideas that gave rise to both these great revolutions we're very similar. Lafayette, who fought alongside Washington in the American War of Independence, indeed based his drafting on Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. And many of the more moderate revolutionaries including Lafayette and Mirabaeu looked back to the 1688 Glorious Revolution to inspire them (which Burke famously defended in 'Reflections'). Until 1791 and the Storming of the Tulleries 'Revolutionary' France had a constitutional monarchy with a property qualification for voting that excluded many ordinary Frenchmen (even many who had voted for the Estates General in 1789). Before the French Revolution even Enlightenment philosophers like Montesquieu and Voltaire saw England as the model form of Enlightened and progressive government. So the French and American revolutions were much more comparable than Mr. Burke supposed.

Even if Obama supported the US Constitution as a time-honoured institution (it is 200 years old after all) in its form the problem would still lie with its content. Because it doesn't command the same deference as Kings and Lords and is based on abstract Enlightenment ideas rather than something grown out of custom, historical accident (like the English Civil War) and precedent
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Change for Burke should be always be slow and only when absolutely necessary, otherwise it would only lead to disaster and would disrupt what our wise ancesters put in place. Why should we think we know better than our forefathers? in other words question nothing! (The answer is the corollary what reason do we have to think we are any less wiser than other homo sapiens in previous generations). Barack Obama ran on a ticket of radical change in the midst of an unpopular and disastrous war in Iraq and the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. However Obama's slogan of 'Change' was moderated in a Burkean temperament 'We Can Believe in' perhaps calling for realism, caution and a certain amount of circumspection. All attitudes Burke would share. And as Roger Scruton and Michael Oakeshott have always emphasised Conservatism is a cast of mind or attitude not a list of abstract formulas.

On Paine i've slightly less to say. Only that despite being born over 200 years before Obama he was to the left of America's first black president in a lot of ways. For example he opposed the death penalty as barbaric and a hangover of monarchical tyranny that brutalised people into more killing. Obama supports it in the most extreme cases. Paine was also an Deist and an Anti-Theist, whereas Obama's former pastor was Jeremiah Wright. He's furthermore a devout and sincere believer in a time where we have far greater scientific knowledge than in Paine's day. Need i say more!

And the most radical republicans, whose violence and chaos Burke prophesised in 'Reflections of the French Revolution', like Maximillien Robespierre, Danton and Saint-Just were opposed to the Declaration of the Rights of Man (suspending its operation during the Terror 1793-1794) and against the thoroughly bourgeoise nature of the early revolution. Calling for a republic based on virtue and a revival civic republican traditions of ancient Rome and Sparta. Terror and Virtue!