The Ohio Farmer on the Debates

In today's Letter from a Ohio Farmer, a project of the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, the Farmer wonders aloud if the current process of picking a president--with much of it being based solely on debate performances--is worthy of a nation like ours.  Here is the Farmer:

What’s so strange about the growing importance of debates in presidential campaigns is that debating – even defined loosely as appearing poised, serious, imperturbable, and well-informed in what amounts to a competitive group press-conference – doesn't correspond to anything a president ever does once elected.  An American president does not, like a British prime minister, have to defend his policies to critics in legislative chambers.  Presidents talk a lot in public, of course, but always in highly controlled settings that allow them to confine their remarks to the subjects they want to talk about, and address them in ways of their own choosing.  Saying we elected Smith president because he’s such a good debater, then, is a little like saying that we chose Jones to be our quarterback because he's such a good ice skater.

As the Farmer chronicles, debates between presidential nominees became the standard in our politics only after the Nixon-Kennedy debates leading up to the election in 1960. 

But, as an logical extension from the above paragraph, one wonders if the characteristics to successfully become president are the same as those it takes to actually be a good president.  Would today's process make it easier or harder to pick a man like Lincoln, who would look awfully strange, and would have a voice that would be unimpressive?  If the answer is in the affirmative, then that should tell us something about the great flaws of the current process.