In response to Chris Cilizza, Ross Douthat lays out two possible options for Sarah Palin’s political future—the first being a presidential run in 2012, which he argues would be fraught with complications, and the other a run in 2016 or 2020, for which she’ll have a decade or so to mature as a leader and rebrand herself politically.

Douthat clearly leans toward the latter tack:

Meanwhile, she can hoard her political capital, campaign for GOP candidates in 2010 and 2012 and create a generation of office-holders who owe her, and spend some time reintroducing herself to the American public in a less-partisan context. What Edwards did with poverty, she could do with education or health care or some other issue where the GOP is weak - and better still, she could get involved in overseas charity work, and spend a lot of time shuttling around the Middle East and Africa with Rick Warren and Bono, helping widows and orphans and AIDS patients, occasionally meeting foreign leaders, and filling up the back pages of her passport. Next thing you know, she’ll have Nick Kristof plugging her in his columns, and Bill Clinton praising her at goodwill dinners (not that he wouldn’t anyway), and the ladies from The View having her on to chat about her charity work - and she’ll refuse to talk politics, thank you very much, and although the base will still love her, the days when she spent all her time attacking Barack Obama and fumbling through nightly-news interviews will be long forgotten. And then - then - in 2016 or 2020, she’ll run for President, and as long as some rising half-Hispanic GOP star doesn’t come along to play Obama to her Hillary, the rest will be history.

The trouble with this is that it runs counter to Palin’s disposition. Palin is not the Hillary Clinton type, cautious and deliberative, a public figure whose political vision extends out over several election cycles.

Rather, Palin is a reformer who stumbled into politics with all the urgency of a moral crusader. That zealousness has propelled her to this point, and will fuel her at least through 2010 (assuming she avoids difficult interviews and makes no major gaffes over the next month).

But ultimately her moral zeal, which to this point has proven her greatest asset, lies starkly at odds with the kind of strategic patience she will need to remain atop the GOP.  The same myopia that has allowed her to brush off critics and foes alike has, at the same time, made it difficult for her to undertake the kind of long term thinking that Douthat advocates.

Which is why Palin will prove to be a flash in the pan in presidential terms, with at most a frenzied run in 2012. Beyond that she’ll serve as little more than a cultural flashpoint, a telegenic face the news orgs can turn to anytime they’re particularly desperate to boost ratings.