Keep in mind that the POTUS doesn’t write his own speeches, it’s the peggy noonans he’d hired that do. Sure (or not) he reads them beforehand and approves of them, but it is his staff of dedicated socialists or communists who come up with the phrases to satisfy their own ideologies and their boss’.
“Obama Blames Job Losses on Technology”
Wonder if he’ll blame the teleprompter when he loses HIS “job” in 2012.
It doesn't matter "Who hired Craig Livingstone" - because whoever did it did so under the president's authority, in the very building where the president lived and worked. And it doesn't matter who wrote a particular speech, because they not only did it under the president's authority but the president hired them and the president used their words.In an extreme case, Ronald Reagan saw "Tear down this wall!" in his speechwriter's draft, and liked it. The foreign policy establishment deleted it. Reagan reinserted it, and they deleted it again. Finally Reagan told the secretary typing the thing that if she brought him a new draft and "Tear down this wall! wasn't in it, she would be fired!
The president is responsible for everything that goes on in the White House simply because "it happened on his watch." But to say that the president isn't responsible for what he himself says, irrespective of who wrote it, is to give a whole new level of meaning to the word "fatuous."
It is still Washington's Farewell Address, and I don't care if Alexander Hamilton wrote it. Because if it was just "Hamilton's Essay," nobody would now remember it. Washington gave it authority by delivering it.