Are you arguing that privilege escalation is the equivalent to passwordless root login? I mean, I guess you squint just right you could say that a logged out user having zero privileges being able to login as a user with all privileges is an "escalation" but that's one hell of a stretch. We haven't even gotten to snark yet though.

We can point to avenues for remote root all day but I don't recall any that are/were as simple as "just hit [enter] to get root" that impacts the shared attack surface that impacts all Linux systems.

NOTE: I did not go and search NVD before writing this reply but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express once.