WHAT do Ed Miliband and President Obama have in common? Facing short-term political problems, they have both come up with desperate quick-fix solutions that could land them in much bigger difficulties in the future.

The President's problems began a year ago, with a careless remark that the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime would cross a red line. This was the peacenik who came to office railing against "dumb" wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The gas attack in Damascus last month seemed to allow him no option. It left him in the unlikely position of a bellicose hawk.

The Labour leader's problems began with a little local difficulty over the selection of a parliamentary candidate in Falkirk. But Ed Miliband decided to lock horns with the candidate's sponsoring trade union, Unite. It has ended with a full-scale conflict between him and the union leaders, whose members provide most of the cash that bankrolls Labour's election campaigns.

It is possible, of course, that the two men wanted to end up where they have. Perhaps President Obama buys into the Washington geo-politics that sees the Assad regime as a proxy for its supporters: Iran, with its nuclear ambitions, and Hezbollah, the mortal enemy of Washing-ton's ally, Israel. Perhaps Mr Miliband sees breaking the financial stranglehold of the unions over Labour policy - whose support, ironically enough, was what saw him elected leader - as the key test of his credentials as the next generation's "moderniser".

Yet it is odd that neither of these two political leaders sought to make the case earlier. Until the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, rode to his unlikely rescue, President Obama appeared to be stumbling in a direction opposed to all his instincts. Mr Miliband appears to have been bounced into his confrontation by the Falkirk row rather than have set out to recalibrate the relationship between the two halves of the Labour movement with the kind of considered policy review that could have cast light instead of creating heat. No wonder TUC delegates were lukewarm in their reception when he spoke at their conference on Tuesday.

There are other mystifying elements. Why did President Obama leave it so late to seek the views of the US Congress on a military strike? Was it because he was hoping that they would say no, and get him off the hook that he had made for himself? If so, it was a tactic that risked making him look foolish, since, as US commander-in-chief, he did not need congressional permission to use force. And why did he not offer President Assad the option earlier of putting his chemical weapons in UN hands? He gives every impression of making it up as he goes along.

Ditto Mr Miliband. His supporters say that he has set out a principled position that could lose Labour a great deal of money. So why did he float the idea without without any apparent idea of how the new arrangements would work? And are there not more important issues for him at a time when he is being accused of a paucity of policies on the economy and society? The election is just two years away, and the Tories are rallying.

There is a terrible amateurishness about it all. We need our politics, at home and globally, to be considerably more grown-up.