Well, a lot of politicians on both sides of the aisle are using teleprompters now. It's a tool and IMHO, the measure of the man is how he uses the tool, not whether or not he can get by without it. Michelangelo was said to have had the ability to draw a perfect circle without the use of a compass, but as impressive as that was, I would not judge the work of another artist of comparable stature by whether or not he needed a compass to make perfect circles.
I also believe there are different kinds of speeches. There's persuasive speech, where you are trying to win someone over to your POV and you need to appear unscripted and genuine for that, even if you refer occasionally to notes or outlines. Imagine a lawyer pleading for his client's life to a jury, using a teleprompter. He'd be ridiculed and the jury wouldn't pay any attention to anything he said. But there are other kinds of speeches, inspirational speeches, the kind that a leader might deliver to inspire the citizenry generally, and this kind of speech has to be more of a performance, less reality-grounded because you want the audience to believe that they can be more than what they are, they can "reach for the stars." In these inspirational speeches, the teleprompter, if used well, can make the performance more flawless, the speaker appear more "heroic" and less ordinary and if it fulfills that function, then it's done its job.