It's been awhile since I played The Civil War, but it seems like the system forces you to choose between activating 1 "good" leader or two lesser leaders. Most CDGs that have leader activations don't seem to present such a choice. If the card you play has more ops than necessary to activate a particular leader, many times you just burn the extra ops.
It's the opposite - often one lousy leader vs. a couple good ones. But yes, many CDGs don't let you use a
card for more than one leader. That's why I used the 'less restrictive' qualifier, because there are some (like
Here I Stand, IIRC), that allow you to just spend your ops as you wish.