I couldn't agree with you more Mithalwen. I think you pretty much summed up what Elrond was all about. Elrond did many things to help a long the fellowship besides using strength of arms. He was a good counciler, he instructed Aragorn to take the paths of the dead, he sent a long his 2 sons to go fight with Aragorn, and him and Gandalf together constructed the main plan against Mordor.
I would like to go a little deeper in depth with
Child of the 7th Age's point.
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The question of what is required to make one a "Ringbearer" is an interesting thing to discuss, but less pertinent to the storyline itself, at least in my head. Boromir, for example, was not a Ringbearer, never got to possess the thing, and yet it defined the outcome of his life. It was the lure of the Ring that made it dangerous to even come in sight of the thing, let alone to handle it physically.
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I think you are right, we could even "expand" upon the term "bearers." You have the physical bearers (Frodo, Isildur), then the mental bearers (Boromir) and you have both (Gollum, possibly Bilbo). The physical bearer are obvious ones who handled, the ring physically (or by touching it) and of course who "bore" the ring with intentions in their mind, whether to destroy it or not. Then you have the "mental bearers," like Boromir, who saw the ring, and thought about it through the whole journey of the fellowship, finally going mad and succumbing to it. He didn't have to "touch" the ring, for him to succumb to the ring. Then you have people who do both. One that stands out the most, Gollum, he bore the ring for a long time, then when he lost it it was always on his mind, and he was always trying to find a way to get it back. So, you could put him in both categories. Possibly Bilbo too, he had it, gave it up, but then he always wanted to "see" it again. I would think anyone who "bore" the ring, then lost posession of it in someway, would fall under both categories, physical and mental.