The other day I noticed that John Kerry’s most recent campaign slogan is “Let America be America again.” At the time, I thought it may have been taken from a line on The West Wing. A reader pointed out that the line from The West Wing was taken from Reagan’s 1984 campaign when, after losing a debate to Walter Mondale, Reagan’s advisors adopted the slogan “Let Reagan be Reagan.” I’m sure the Kerry campaign wishes that people were focusing on that, rather than on the fact that the line is taken from a poem written during the Great Depression by a communist sympathizer expressing his feeling that there never was an American golden age to get back to (a sentiment that I agree with, generally speaking, given that I’m no fan of nostalgia).