Washington ? Leaving office diminishes most leaders, as Bill Clinton proves anew with regularity from the limbo of ex-power. Vaclav Havel is the rare exception: His departure from the Czech Republic’s presidency early next year will diminish that office beyond repair.

The contrast between Havel’s recent poignant farewell tour in the United States and Clinton’s headline-grabbing criticisms of President Bush’s foreign policy while traveling overseas is a product not only of the differences in the two men but also of this moment of crisis in world affairs.

The threat of a major war applies a crystallizing pressure on political leaders everywhere. With lives, fortune and history on the line, character emerges from beneath the carefully cultivated images of the spin doctors and masters of puff. There will be profiles aplenty out of the Iraq crisis: some in courage, some in expediency, and many in damage control.

Havel was in the United States a few weeks ago for the 13th and last time as Czech president. At Blair House, the former dissident and writer spoke of his hopes that NATO would be “one of the pillars of a broad international coalition” that will intervene in Iraq. His unflinching stand on Iraq and other tyrannies “comes out of experience with totalitarianism. You cannot compromise with it.”

Britain’s Tony Blair also stands out as a proud interventionist seeking justice abroad, as he did in Kosovo in 1999. Germany’s Gerhard Schroeder comes up as an opportunist who, much worse for him, has pushed his relations with Bush to the breaking point. The president feels he was personally misled by the German chancellor over how Schroeder would conduct the recent German campaign, knowledgeable officials tell me.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin quietly and craftily pursues his nation’s broader interests with Bush while minions champion Iraq’s cause. One Russian official predicts that Putin will not break with Bush over Iraq: A Russian abstention on a tough new resolution at the United Nations is now in the cards.

This crystallization occurs in Washington as well, even within the same political party. Take the differing responses of Democratic leaders Dick Gephardt and Tom Daschle to Bush’s request for congressional support for military action against Iraq.

Gephardt shows up as a reasonable centrist able to get Bush to accept meaningful changes to a use-of-force resolution. The Missouri representative appears to be acting from conviction rather than calculation: His position goes against the activist liberal base that can decide his party’s early presidential primaries; but he perseveres.

Daschle, the beneficiary of an image of decency and likeability in the Senate, now appears to cavil and maneuver on Iraq to gain political advantage with that same activist base. Whatever the depth of his genuine misgivings, Daschle has taken the potentially poisonous bait that Bush political strategist Karl Rove has put forward for potential Democratic nominees for November 2004 poisonous providing that Bush manages Iraq without disaster.

As president, Clinton never had to endure public criticism on foreign policy from his predecessor, George H.W. Bush, who maintained a principled and discreet silence.

Unfortunately, Clinton has chosen to emulate Bush the father in one ex-presidential habit by taking lucrative speaking fees from foreign groups with significant political and economic interests in influencing the U.S. government. But he fails to refrain from claiming he knows better than his successor.

Clinton, who has been periodically engaged in negotiations with American television networks for a king’s ransom to become a talk show host, journeyed to Saudi Arabia last January to accept a quarter of a million dollars for a speech delivered four months after Sept. 11.

He told Blair’s Labor Party conference in Blackpool on Wednesday that he shared the British left’s concerns on a range of Bush foreign policy initiatives. And America should not seek to influence the world in a domineering way, he added, after indicating that Bush had his priorities wrong in the war on terrorism and his tactics wrong on Iraq.

Not much of a surprise. Clinton charged at a California fund-raiser on Sept. 5 that Bush was “changing the subject” to Iraq from the fight against al-Qaida. Even Clinton seems to feel that such rhetoric is not appropriate while abroad: he had told ABC television on Sept. 27 from South Africa that he shouldn’t get into foreign policy debates from overseas. But Clinton ignored his own advice last week.

Say this for Clinton: He is not concerned with party politics. He is still in the grip of his legacy obsession. He cannot resist showing us how much quicker he is than are the Bushes and still how much less disciplined.