Who cares? He said it. The words are his responsibility. If his speech had advocated for grinding orphans into a nutritious paste, we wouldn’t be defending him on the basis that he didn’t write those words. He chose to read them and give them his official backing.

That's because we mean "credit for how well-written the thing is", whereas you mean "credit for agreeing with the meaning".

He still is responsible for the team that wrote it.

a publisher is responsible for a book, but the credit of the thing is poured onto the author.

why?

Because the book is plastered with the author's as well as the publisher's name. Their separation is easily comprehensible. Whereas when an orator delivers, the separation of the writer is not so apparent. It is automatically assumed the orator is the writer.

This is a perfect example of a motte and bailey. The "motte" is that people should be judged badly for parroting horrible ideas they heard (which makes sense) and the "bailey" is that people should be praised just for parroting nice things they heard (which doesn't make sense).

Upvote for practical and informative description of a logical fallacy, with extra love for motte and bailey.

Doesn't "motte and bailey" involve the same person taking the more extreme position followed by the more defensible position?

The link says:

> My suspicion is that Pope Francis may have more to do with crafting his own speeches than did previous pontiffs, because Pope Francis’ talks strike me as more spontaneous, conversational, and unfiltered.

Anyway, a public figure is still giving the direction and “plot points” to their speech writer.

That pope was part of the Jesuits. If you don't know who the Jesuits are, let's just say they are amongst the most academically trained, most intellectual catholic religious orders there is.

Even if Pope Francis gave the charge of writing his speeches to someone else, that would be an heavy responsability for that person.

JFK didn't write his own speeches either for the most part, he was still a heck of an orator.

A friend of mine was one of his speech writers. JFK would change words and construction depending on how he liked it. The speech writers learned and he made less and less changes.

What you don't know is he would try things out on the golf course with his friend Buddy Hackett.