Eighty-five years ago this week, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "New Deal" speech changed American politics forever. Promising suffering Americans that he would spare neither tradition nor expense to restore hope, FDR's election ushered in a growth in government that had been previously unimaginable. Ever since, political leaders have divided themselves into left and right, battling over the size and expense of government.

Common wisdom holds that Ronald Reagan, a devoted FDR acolyte during Roosevelt's life, became the most powerful opponent of his legacy after Reagan's swing to the right. But the common wisdom is wrong. Reagan, in word and deed, was actually FDR's true heir.

Reagan never explicitly claimed this, but his speeches and writings suggest that's exactly what he thought. He readily admitted he had voted for FDR four times and in 1982 wrote in his diary that he was trying to "undo the Great Society," not the New Deal. He always said that he had not left the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party had left him. He even quoted FDR directly in the 1964 television speech on behalf of Barry Goldwater that made him a national figure.

Time and again, Reagan turned to FDR's words and made them his own. This extended far beyond repeating memorable phrases like "this generation has a rendezvous with destiny" or calling working Americans "the forgotten man."

His famous line in the closing arguments in his 1980 debate with President Carter -- "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" -- paraphrased a line from FDR's seventh fireside chat. A funny line from his Goldwater speech was nearly identical to a line from Roosevelt's fifth fireside chat. And when Reagan met Mikhail Gorbachev in Geneva for the first time, he took his measure of the Soviet leader in front of roaring blaze in the hearth of a cottage. He told Gorby this was their "fireside chat."

Reagan's debt to FDR was intellectual as well as rhetorical. Roosevelt's basic innovation was to place government squarely on the side of the average American in his or her quest for comfort, dignity, and respect. If private markets and charity did not afford these things to someone who worked to improve themselves (Roosevelt had no truck for slackers), then it was government's duty to provide or encourage their provision.

Conservatives then and forever since have often distinguished themselves by openly or tacitly rejecting this principle. Such open opposition forms the heart of Herbert Hoover's argument for his re-election and of Goldwater's best-selling book, “The Conscience of a Conservative.” Open opposition today is left to libertarians, but conservatives still tacitly deny it when they oppose virtually any extension of federal subsidies for any social program.

Reagan never embraced that view. He told audiences in his early speeches that he wouldn't repeal most post-New Deal programs "at any price. They represented forward thinking on our part." He supported federal grants to states in the early 1960s before Medicare was adopted so that needy seniors could afford care. And in 1961 he said "any person in the United States who requires medical attention and cannot provide for himself should have it provided for him."

These were not mere words for him. When he inherited a budget crisis upon his becoming California governor, he pushed through a then-record tax hike rather than slash state programs. His 1971 welfare reform increased monthly checks an average of 43 percent: He called it "giving them a raise." And as president he increased taxes three times rather than attack entitlement spending. In each case he overcame strong opposition from hard-line conservatives, but Reagan always quietly derided such folk as "ultras" who would rather "jump off the cliff with flags flying" rather than compromise.

Reagan owed his political success to his unique "New Deal conservatism." Unlike more ideological anti-government types before and since, Reagan attracted enthusiastic support from blue-collar whites, people who became known as "Reagan Democrats." Conservative leaders from Barry Goldwater to Newt Gingrich to Mitt Romney have seen their hopes dashed on the rocky shores of these voters who have never preferred low taxes and liberty to a government that has their backs. Ronald Reagan succeeded where they failed precisely because this former fan of Roosevelt was singing from the same hymnal as were Roosevelt's worshipers.

Roosevelt and Reagan are no longer with us in body, but their spirit still rules our land. Today's political polarization flows from the fact that left and right increasingly seek to reject the shared heritage of these great men, albeit from different directions. When running for governor in 1966, Reagan called talk "in America of left and right" to be "disruptive talk, dividing us down the center." That center was and is a moderate interpretation of New Deal principles that neither fetishizes nor rejects government action. Ronald Reagan changed our world by renewing FDR's vision. Pray that a new leader will soon arise who can carry their work into our new century.