Few men have played politics as opportunistically and irresponsibly as Nelson Rockefeller has in pressing his shelter program in New York, while throttling its critics.

The Governor was an early advocate of massive civil defense, then backtracked when he encountered opposition within the state. Now, heartened and apparently vindicated by the national C.D. undertaking, Rockefeller claims credit for great military foresight and political courage. This time he risked no opposition; Speaker Joseph F. Carlino rushed the bill through the State Assembly, while Rockefeller helped him to impugn the motives of those who warned of the shelter plan's implicit dangers.

In his "vigorous defense" of Carlino, who sponsored the civil defense bill while serving as a 'director' of Lancer Industries, Inc., manufacturer of family fallout shelters, Rockefeller told the subcommittee investigating conflict-of-interest charges, "this is a matter of national survival." And nothing else?

Rep. Mark Lane raised the question of Carlino's impartiality after Warren C. Adams, a prospective investor, quoted Lancer officials as saying they had Carlino "in our hip pocket." Adams testified to this under oath, and Carlino admitted that his law firm received $5,000 from Lancer while he personally received other fees in his role as director. But, the accused Speaker claimed, though he was still director of the construction firm when he guided the bill past the Assembly, he had already given notice of his intention to resign. By phone. "I neglected to send that letter," Carlino sighed to his interrogators.

When the case against him seemed overwhelming, Carlino launched a two pronged attack. First he tried a classic smear, telling the Assembly and the press that since the "Communist line" was anti-shelter, his accuser was therefore a Communist or a Communist dupe. Patronizingly, Carlino confessed: "I don't know whether he is being used or is part and parcel of the whole operation."

More significantly, though, Carlino argued that the Governor had urged hasty passage of the shelter program, and that he, Carlino, only did what a good Republican should by falling in line. The following day (Feb. 6, one day before he came to Harvard as a non-political academic), Rockefeller took the stand and insisted that the shelter issue was "beyond party and beyond partisanship and beyond considerations of personal advantage."

This is simply not true, and Rockefeller should realize that the shelter program, a contractor's dream, invites exactly the type of misbehavior that Carlino so plainly has exhibited. As Lane said in self-defense (for the counter-attack took its toll), the shelter bill was simply too important to be slammed on a legislator's desk for virtually automatic approval.

The question of national survival must not be allowed to obscure the dangers which the shelter program entails; these can only be coped with if genuine debate is allowed to flourish. Just two days ago in Congress, a conflict-of-interest issue was raised concerning the various private research firms which double as military advisers and suppliers to the federal government.

Profiteering is not the only danger suggested by the shelter boom. Legislation now before Congress ascribes a quasi-military function to private buildings, blurs the distinction between civil and national defense, and jeopardizes the strike right of building-trades workers in the name of national survival. Needless to say, Rockefeller's political stance and rhetoric before the New York Assembly subcommittee adds considerable impetus to such frightening developments.

The Governor has already subordinated one respected national value, full legislative debate, to a vague phrase. In upholding Carlino's cheap, dishonest excuses he has indulged a reckless ends-justify-the-means policy in an area where, as he should know, the ends require careful definition and consideration.

This academic, this liberal, this man of principle had better start living up to his pretensions.