WASHINGTON -- My advice to Sarah Palin, not that she would take it, is that she'd better be careful. If she keeps pretending to run for the presidential nomination, people might take her seriously.

The former half-term Alaska governor's "One Nation" bus tour has made the Republican establishment nervous. If her aim is just to get back in the news, reinflate the Palin brand and boost her speaking fees, then party leaders have every reason to be pleased. In the unlikely event that she's actually running, they have every reason to order another Scotch.

What the GOP should worry about is the intoxication that adoring crowds often induce in politicians. Palin might board the bus intending to pull a Trump and disembark convinced that now, more than ever, the nation requires her service. The hosannas ringing in her ears might deafen her to voices of reason.

Odds are it won't happen. But the fact that Palin's ego trip so easily stole the spotlight from the actual Republican candidates shows what a challenge the party faces in trying to deny President Obama a second term.

Poor Tim Pawlenty was trying to roll out his candidacy, and every interviewer wanted to ask what he thought of Palin. This was his introduction to the American people -- those who don't live in Minnesota, where he was governor for eight years -- and he obviously wanted to come off as bold and decisive. He charged, for example, that Obama has been too timid in committing U.S. forces to military action in Libya.

But Pawlenty, like the other candidates, had to be polite when asked about Palin because her followers can be passionate and unforgiving. By Friday, he was clearly exasperated. "Who knows? I don't know if she's running or not," he said on MSNBC. "We need to quit worrying about polls and bus tours and get onto the issue of how we're going to fix the country and get the country back on track."

Then again, that "fix the country" issue wasn't working all that well, either. On Tuesday, in a special election, Republicans lost a safe congressional seat in upstate New York because of their candidate's support for Rep. Paul Ryan's budget, which would transform Medicare into a voucher program. On Wednesday, Pawlenty spent most of the day trying to avoid saying whether he supported the Ryan plan or not.