We are all Burkeans now

Marbury:

the true conservative in this race...

...is Obama, according to the man himself in this interview with Time's Karen Tumulty:

It partly explains why, if you look at not just my politics, but also I think who I am as a person—in some ways, I'm pretty culturally conservative. I was always suspicious of dogma, and the excesses of the left and the right. One of my greatest criticisms of the Republican Party over the last 20 years is that it's not particularly conservative. I can read conservatives from an earlier era—a George Will or a Peggy Noonan—and recognize wisdom, because it has much more to do with respect for tradition and the past and I think skepticism about being able to just take apart a society and put it back together. Because I do think that communities and nations and families aren't subject to that kind of mechanical approach to change. But when I look at Tom DeLay or some of the commentators on Fox these days, there's nothing particularly conservative about them.

I haven't heard him talk about himself as a conservative of any kind before. I mean, I think it is pretty clear if you look at his instinctive approach to the issues - as Larissa MacFarquhar pointed out in her brilliant profile of Obama last year, he's a Burkean at heart, respectful of tradition and wary of abstract ideas - but it's interesting to see him making that explicit. Also, good to hear a shout-out to the incomparable Peggy Noonan. The whole interview is worth reading (and you read Tumulty's parsing of the veep tealeaves he sprinkles, here. Her conclusion? It's Bayh - or a mystery choice).

At last- someone else noticed.