On Wednesday morning, about an hour or so after I broke the news, Politico co-founder and top editor John Harris announced that the site had hired Dasha Burns, the 32-year-old NBC News political correspondent, to serve as White House bureau chief. On one level, the hire seemed like another garden-variety, post-election trade window acquisition, albeit dressed up with typical, avuncular Harrisian hyperbole: Politico had been in “urgent and lively conversations with dozens of talented journalists,” the elder statesman wrote. “We are organizing for impact,” he declared. And then there was—wait for it—that old Politico internal memo standby: “In many ways, Dasha was born for this moment.” Generals have sent soldiers to their deaths with less.