We envy parliamentary systems (for many good reasons!), but centralized political parties do tend to promote people who know how to climb the ladder of a centralized bureaucracy instead of ones who know how to work a room. Most national British politicians (for example) would rather do anything but be in a room with their constituents.
Such systems can make candidates out of people who are successful in local politics, but instead tend to make candidates out of people who have been asskissing their way to the top within the central national party network. You can't just become an MP candidate for a major party by running in a primary.
Obviously the American political system is distorted by money and nepotism - that's how we have Senator Vance - but much of the political system is still populated by people who "do politics" in that somewhat idealized way. You can hustle your way from city council to state house to governor to president, from pressing the flesh at senior citizen centers to becoming a senator.
Probably "machine politics" is the closest comparison to centralized powerful political parties with internal candidate selection, and of course the US has some examples of that. Hi/bye Bob Menendez!
One big flaw in our system is that it definitely benefits politicians that know how to kiss the asses of national political journalists, who among other faults tend to be extremely dishonest about the roles they play. A good recent example was the nonstop coverage of a certain Florida governor whose name you've already forgotten.