Some political ideas are so old they feel new. In his 1944 State of the Union address, an ailing Franklin D. Roosevelt sketched his ambitions for a “Second Bill of Rights” — a vision of “adequate medical care,” “a good education,” “a useful and remunerative job,” “a decent home” and “freedom from unfair competition and monopolies” as the birthright of all Americans.

From the 1930s through the 1970s, American politics took place largely on Roosevelt’s liberal terrain. Since then, even Democratic presidents have often been forced to play on Ronald Reagan’s conservative side of the field.

Suddenly, though, Roosevelt is alive again in the 2020 Democratic primary campaign: His ideas for using government to improve lives echo through stump speeches across Iowa and New Hampshire.

Roosevelt’s dream of “cradle to grave” coverage animates proposals for baby bonds, universal pre-K and Medicare for All. His ambitious and environmentally prescient Civilian Conservation Corps, which employed three million men and planted three billion trees in less than a decade, is the progenitor of the “Green New Deal” and various impressive national service proposals, whether proponents of those plans know it or not. And his famous declaration that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” is routinely deployed to blast President Trump for stoking hate and fear.

But there’s a right way and a wrong way to revive Roosevelt. Before we allow anyone to assume his mantle, let’s separate candidates merely seeking inspiration for big ideas from those misappropriating his legacy.

Bernie Sanders, the most explicit of the Roosevelt wannabes, is in the latter category. He has repurposed the “Second Bill of Rights” address on his website to report that Roosevelt was constantly attacked as a socialist, so he must have actually been one — just like the independent senator from Vermont. He’s betting that a younger post-Cold War generation won’t conflate his brand of democratic socialism with communism, as many of their elders wrongly do.

But Roosevelt was an improvisational pragmatist — a “juggler,” he called himself — not a socialist. While his idea for Social Security contained socialistic elements (as did George W. Bush’s 2008 bank bailout), he understood that in a nation of strivers, the concept is a political loser. When asked his political philosophy, he replied: “I’m a Christian and a Democrat, that’s all.”

Today’s jostling Democrats may be cheered to learn that Roosevelt’s political talent was not evident at first. Derided as a pampered lightweight (“Feather-Duster Roosevelt”), he was barely nominated on the fourth ballot at the 1932 Democratic Convention. H.L. Mencken wrote that he would almost certainly lose to the incumbent, Herbert Hoover, in November.

The “New Deal for America” that Roosevelt offered in his electrifying acceptance speech that year contained few specifics. It was, as Senator Amy Klobuchar said of this year’s Green New Deal, “aspirational.” He ran in the fall as an upbeat fuzzy moderate and won mostly because voters despised Hoover.

Even after Roosevelt took office at the depths of the Depression, he had no unified plan, just a vague commitment to “action and action now.” But he quickly made good on that pledge with a dizzying series of inventive programs and structural changes that have inspired “100 Days plans” from Ms. Klobuchar and others.

Not all were embraced on the left. Like President Barack Obama in 2009, Roosevelt in 1933 rejected calls to nationalize failing banks after they reopened. His larger aim was to reform capitalism so it worked better for ordinary people, which sounds a lot like Elizabeth Warren’s agenda.

Senator Warren’s challenge is that today’s economic anxieties might not be powerful enough to drive real change. Roosevelt capitalized on the Great Depression: It helped him offer government jobs, regulate Wall Street, raise taxes sharply on the wealthy, launch huge infrastructure projects and secure a minimum wage — all ideas reprised by today’s Democrats, but in a much stronger economy.

Running for re-election in 1936, Roosevelt said of his big-money critics: “They are unanimous in their hate of me and I welcome their hatred.”

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Jonathan Alter, the author of “The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope,” is writing a biography of Jimmy Carter.