Let's be clear on the criticism here: The president uses prepared remarks. Horrors.
The teleprompter is a fancy version of a prepared text. Used skillfully, it enables a speaker to deliver a speech more effectively because one does not have to look down periodically to read one's speech. But it's an acquired skill, and not one easily learned, which is why presidents (and others) are sometimes loath to use the thing. Dwight Eisenhower was the first president to use one and hated it: He thought that it could work if the speaker could control the pace at which the text scrolls by. But again the important point here is that using a teleprompter means that the prepared text scrolls by on a screen rather than on pages in front of the speaker. That's it.
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