Given the current situation, who's going to lead Missouri?

When a man spends his own money to buy something for himself, he is very careful. ... And when he spends someone else's money on someone else, he doesn't care how much he spends or what he spends it on. And that's government for you. -- Milton Friedman

Is there a message in there for Gov. Bob Holden? Was the defeat of Proposition B a referendum on 10 years of Carnahan-Holden budgeting, with explosive spending growth but little to show in road-and-bridge improvements? Are Missourians saying that state government has quite enough resources, and that we in state government must live with what taxpayers have entrusted to us?

I believe the answers are yes, yes and yes.

The week of the Aug. 6 primary election, the state department of economic development issued a press release with an ominous announcement: "Missouri Loses More Jobs Than Any Other State/Study Finds Manufacturing Hardest Hit; Economist Calls Results a Warning," read the headline in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

This alarming news came a week before the American Airlines announcement of drastic job cuts for St. Louis.

These two dog-days-of-August pieces of news followed on last winter's announcement by Ford Motor Co. of the impending closure of the Hazelwood Ford Plant, home to 2,600 high-paying manufacturing jobs.

Ford has plants in 47 states. Why was Missouri chosen as one of only five states to lose a plant? Good question.

Perhaps some energetic reporter should put it to the governor.

Inquire into the matter and you'll find it costs Ford $150 more per automobile to make an Explorer at Hazelwood than it does to make one in Louisville, Ky. - and an Explorer comes off the assembly line every minute. Guess which plant is staying open?

On the Friday after the primary, Holden received another body blow in the form of the removal of $300 million in new tax money he was counting on for the fiscal year 2004 budget. This was the 55-cent-a-pack tobacco tax being pushed for the November ballot by hospitals, with the money to go toward the state's mushrooming Medicaid budget.

Petition circulators failed to get enough valid signatures, and so that revenue won't be there after all. Recent internal polling results indicated, by the way, that Missourians' attitudes toward this proposed tobacco tax increase have turned sour.

Well, what about it? Can Missouri continue down the Holden-Carnahan path of proposed taxing our way to prosperity? I think we know Milton Friedman's answer. And that of Missourians as well.

In 1976, an upstart candidate, given little chance of defeating an incumbent governor, ran a campaign featuring a sarcastic radio commercial. "Gov. Bond claims he has the state moving again. Well, he has the airport moving to Illinois ... ."

With that and a lot of demagoguery on utility rates, and a party tide at his back, Walkin' Joe Teasdale squeaked by incumbent Kit Bond by about 13,000 votes in one of the most stunning upsets in Missouri history.

With jobs hemorrhaging at record rates, and Holden seemingly about to preside over the move of the St. Louis Cardinals to the Land of Lincoln, what lies ahead down this path for our beloved Show Me State? Where is the leader who can ring the fire bell in the night, and rally the forces of sense and reason?

Peter Kinder is assistant to the chairman of Rust Communications and president pro tem of the Missouri Senate.