In April 1970 Fulbright became the longest-reigning chairman of the SFRC in American history. One after another, the members of the club rose on the floor of the Senate to pay tribute. John Sparkman, Gale McGee, and Russell Long, with all of whom he had differed sharply over Vietnam, praised him as a conscientious, independent, thoughtful statesman. Jacob Javits, whose unflinching support of Israel had repeatedly pitted him against the Arkansan, lauded him as “a man of very deep insight… a fine intellect.” And virtually every member of the SFRC, Republican as well as Democrat, paid him homage.

By the spring of 1970 the flaws in Nixon's policy of Vietnamization were becoming apparent. In an effort to build on the tranquillity that followed in the wake of the silent majority speech, the president announced in March 1970 the withdrawal of one hudred and fifty thousand additional troops during the next year. No matter how useful Vietnamization was in terms of quelling domestic dissent in the United States, however, it was counterproductive to the goal of forcing North Vietnam to negotiate a settlement that would leave the Thieu government intact. The logic of the situation was that Hanoi had only to wait and refuse to make concessions; eventually the Americans would be gone, and the pitifully weak Thieu regime could be summarily dispatched. Indeed, Creighton Abrams had bitterly protested the new troop withdrawals, warning that they would leave South Vietnam dangerously vulnerable to enemy military pressure.