Did you know you could learn everything you need to know about past presidents in each edition of the Glasgow Daily Times? It’ll take you some reading and a little time on your part, but it will be there.

In the run up to the Nov. 2 general election, the Daily Times is running, in order from No. 1 to least — uh, latest — biographical information about each president. It’s been a president a day since Monday and it started with George Washington.

Did you know that Washington won his presidency in a unanimous landslide of 69 votes from the Electoral College. There was no “popular” vote. After becoming president, he presided over the birth of this democracy. Washington served two terms and had the opportunity to serve a third, but rejected the notion. All of that information is in his profile.

Another interesting tidbit I’ve learned about our first president is that he died on Dec. 14, which happens to be my father’s birthday.

Our second president, John Adams, came from the other social spectrum of Washington. Our first president grew up without formal education on a farm in Virginia. Adams was a member of the New England elite. He was educated at Harvard. As much as Washington was a man of the earth and action, Adams was a philosopher and a thinker.

I found an ironic quote from Adams in the present political weather about a vice presidential candidate: “My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.”

Before becoming president, Adams served as Washington’s vice president. His comment was regarding the duties of that post.

As a president, Adams was thin-skinned and not open to criticism, leading him into a bitter conflict with Thomas Jefferson. They reconciled later in life, both having above all a love of our nation foremost in their hearts.

There are present leaders in our nation who would do well to follow their example.

Jefferson followed Adams in the White House — Adams was the first to reside there — and was a contradictory figure. He is the model by which all presidents likely try to mold themselves. His private views often conflicted with his public actions. He was heavily supported by slave owners in the south, but he privately detested slavery. That much has been publicly documented in a film and several books. It’s only mentioned in brief in the article that appears in the Daily Times.

Jefferson holds such a fascination for those who study history, especially presidential history, because of his contradictions. He also wrote the most famous lines regarding our democracy: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

I don’t believe there is any more that can be written.

Check Monday for the next president to be profiled.

James Brown is editor of the Glasgow Daily Times. He can be reached by e-mail at jbrown@glasgowdailytimes.com.