Give Us Liberty

 

BY LINDA BENTLEY | originally published SEPTEMBER 22, 2010

Ike needed birth certificate to run for president

‘Ike had nothing to hide!’

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CAVE CREEK – Glen Fairclough, a reader from Salt Lake City, Utah, sent us an e-mail last week to express his gratitude for publishing the recent article regarding President Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate.

And, while going through digital images online of his hometown newspaper, the Deseret News and Telegram, Fairclough forwarded us a United Press wire article from the Oct. 2, 1952 edition he thought we would find interesting.

The article appeared on page 6A with a dateline of Sherman, Texas. It was headlined: “General’s birth certificate officially filed,” and stated, “A certificate recording Dwight Eisenhower’s birth in Denison on Oct. 14, 1890, was filed Wednesday [Oct. 1, 1952] in the Grayson County Clerk’s office.

“Nobody had bothered to make out a certificate when the Republican presidential candidate was born in a house at the corner of Lamar and Day streets in nearby Denison.

“A copy of the certificate filed Wednesday was mailed to Mrs. Eisenhower in Denver. Eisenhower’s older brother, Arthur, signed the certificate. It was also signed by the Grayson County Judge J.N. Dickson and recorded by County Clerk J.C. Buchanan.”

David Dwight Eisenhower was the third of seven boys born to David Jacob and Ida Elizabeth.

Since he was called Dwight while growing up, Eisenhower swapped his first and middle names when he enrolled at West Point Military Academy.

Elected 34th president of the United States in November 1952, Eisenhower made it through his first 62 years without any need for a birth certificate.

However, the need arose when he became a presidential candidate. Since Eisenhower was the oldest man to be elected president since James Buchanan over 100 years earlier, age was obviously not at issue. Instead, there was protocol in place for presidential candidates to provide proof of eligibility to appear on the ballot.

Eisenhower, whose campaign slogan: “I like Ike” became the most famous in campaign history, won by a landslide with Richard Nixon as his running mate.

Using what the Republicans considered failures of the Truman administration, which was said to be infiltrated by Soviet spies, Eisenhower’s campaign attacked Korea, Communism and corruption.

Republicans also blamed Democrats for the military's failure to be fully prepared to fight in Korea and pounded the Truman administration for harboring a soaring number of officials accused of crimes.

While it’s difficult not to notice history’s propensity toward repeating itself, Fairclough asserted, “Ike had nothing to hide!”