You can configure the plugin with multiple LDAP servers so to failover to a backup if the primary goes down. If you only have one LDAP server then I would recommend getting another one - (Steven - your company is not short of LDAP servers).
There are current non Jenkins workarounds like using a service like MS AD LDS - solutions from other vendors apply also - but this does indeed add to the complexity of getting something like this working adds to support and are less than ideal.
An API token should still work for script based access in order to reset some configuration - but there appears to be no API for Configure System or Configure Global Security that I could find that would allow you to change this.
As for the 1 hour maximum (worth a different JIRA - but 3 days sounds a little excessive to me from a security perspective) - PRs welcome to this code
danielbeck LDAP plugin should already cache this data (assuming you have already authenticated)
Issue title makes no sense.