I often boot machines connected to the public internet or to a coffeeshop / other public wifi with the Ubuntu live CD, so I wouldn't like the live CD to have an sshd with a well-known password out-of-the-box. So if you're going to have to log into the machine to customize authentication anyway, you already have enough access to `apt-get install openssh-server`.

(It would be nice to have a one-click tool that builds you a customized image with your own SSH public keys baked in. Ubuntu doesn't have to run this tool - actually there's probably a cool project idea for someone in standing up a little website to do this, either by letting you paste in public keys or grabbing them from the GitHub public API.)