Teleprompters and the death of extemporaneous speaking

I caught a moment or two of Comrade Obama's weekly address this Saturday, as well as the so-called "response," and it struck me that as politicians have lost their ability to think on their feet as they've become dependent on the teleprompter. If the GOP can finally find someone to respond who can actually think on his feet, they could make Obama pay dearly for his habit of leading with his chin, rhetorically speaking.

A good example; when Obama talked about the "record-setting" deficits of his predecessor, as if he expects the GOP to pass that one by....and thanks to the teleprompter and a lack of people who can think on their feet, he was sadly right.