try asking "how can I automate ssh authentication by password?" sometime. I've still never found an answer other than "never do that, here's how to use ssh-agent."
There's actually a pretty good Stackoverflow answer to this one: https://stackoverflow.com/a/43526842 (Which I think is a good pattern: sure, mention the "you probably should consider Y", but show the alternatives as well)
They want to do easily something that is hard. I can understand their revolt because it shouldn't be hard, but it is.
The easiest way out is probably #1, what probably will need the cooperation of some uncooperative 3rd party. It's the correct question, it's just that the answer sucks.
There's another anti-pattern that I can't recall the name of, where instead of asking if something can do something, you make the claim that it can't, and let them refute you. It's excellent for something people get very defensive over, like Unix.
When I tried googling your exact question, the first hit (https://serverfault.com/a/512220) was a SE post where the highest voted (though not accepted) answer was doing exactly that with `sshpass`
Tbqh, without you explicitly stating that you're aware of key pairs and concluded that storing plaintext passwords is the best solution for you, I would excuse anyone who thought that you maybe just hadn't done the research.
