There's a bit of difference between your online meetings and vying for POTUS. Perry would be giving up a lot to appear remotely. No candidate would ever do such a thing.
Wait a minute here, 99.999 percent of the audience is watching this remotely electronically on the tube.
When questions are asked of Perry, they could just switch to his live feed. What's the problem with that?
BTW, it wouldn't be "on-line". It would be a direct television feed right into his office, or where ever he wanted it. They've been doing this with television for decades.
I do understand that. What I am driving at, or at least trying to, is a subliminal impression that I believe would be made of any candidate not physically present with the rest. I believe he (or she) would be seen as "less than" the ones who are there.
He / she would lose some advantage of being able to gauge his opponents body language and other visua; and non-verbal cues that are useful in a debate.
Does that make sense?