POLITICAL LEADERS in America enjoy no right to a passive audience and that, as recent history has shown, is a very good thing. In the final two year of his embattled Presidency, Lyndon B. Johnson was repeatedly shouted down by anti-war protestors. Eventually Johnson stopped speaking at all but military installations, but according to biographer Doris Kearns, the loud protest had a more lasting effect. Johnson's heightened awareness of the depth of his opposition, hammered home by his public appearances led him to withdraw from the 1968 Presidential race--and to call a halt to years of bloody American bombing in Southeast Asia.

The ACE's recent "poor Jeane" statement, endorsed by the majority editorial above, errs seriously in unilaterally dismissing such forms of dissent. Shouting down a public official can be rude and intolerant, even detestable, but it occasionally can be a legitimate form of political expression. Such is the case when opponents have no other means of gaining significant public attention--and particularly when the public figure in question has so blatantly disregarded the principles of freedom and tolerance as to invite similar behavior.

If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law: it invites anarchy." Louis D. Brandeis wrote more than 50 years ago. His words apply as well today. Ambassador Kirkpatrick's support for the denials of freedoms around the globe--including her ludicrously self-serving distinction between authoritarian and totalitarian regimes--provides more than the ironic backdrop for the current controversy that the majority editorial suggests.

Frustration over America's diminishing commitment to human rights, an issue on which the outspoken ambassador has rightly become a lightning rod, directly prompted the recent protests. The miffed Ambassador would do well to see that her inability to speak in public without being shouted down speaks much about the nature of the policies with which she has become identified. The ACE should have had the courage to lay the blame for the recent confrontations at the doorstep of Kirkpatrick and the Reagan Administration, instead of lambasting justly frustrated student activists.

Free speech is not at stake in this case, the ACE's protestations notwithstanding. Kirkpatrick, as a leading government official, has complete access to the public eye and ear whenever she or her press office wants it. The attempt by some California regents to punish the students who denounced Kirkpatrick, grossly impolite as they were, is a far graver threat to free expression. Were the ACE truly concerned about civil liberties, it would have stressed those dangers instead.