Second terms in high office rarely go well for top-ranking officials and this is certainly true for outgoing UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
If he had opted out after his first five years, he would have left on a high. As it is, Mr Annan steps aside for former South Korean foreign minister Ban Ki-moon in 16 days using his every last breath of authority defending his position rather than basking in the glory of a job well done.
Where once his every word was positive and constructive, his farewell speeches and media interviews have been bitter and combative.
Gone is the reasoned, soft-spoken diplomacy, replaced with sharp-tongued criticism of those perceived to have made him a lame duck - most pointedly, US President George W. Bush and key conservatives of the Bush administration. Symbolically presenting what was billed as his last major speech last Monday at the library of former US president Harry Truman - a founding member of the UN - he quoted the war-time leader in cautioning that 'no nation can make itself secure by seeking supremacy over all others'.
That obvious reference to the administration's decision to ignore the authority of the UN Security Council in March 2003 and go to war against Iraq went to the crux of the matter: it had been, as Mr Annan told the BBC last week, 'very divisive' for the world and UN and personally 'very difficult, very painful'.
Such accusations were rejected by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as a 'real missed opportunity' to highlight the positive aspects of the relationship between the UN and her country. In the past two years alone, that had included the joint launch of a global Aids fund, a Security Council resolution to try to stop violence in Sudan's Darfur region and the UN ceasefire to end the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah guerillas in southern Lebanon.
Dr Rice made no mention of the series of scandals, orchestrated by US officials, that had eroded the moral high ground from which the secretary-general had once spoken. Sex cases involving senior UN officers and humanitarian workers took their toll, but most harrowing was the Iraq oil-for-food debacle, which undermined Mr Annan's leadership and integrity through involving his son, Kojo.