For J. William Fulbright and Richard Nixon, Vietnam and the 1972 presidential election were inextricably intertwined. The president's diplomacy and policies toward Southeast Asia in the summer and fall of 1972 were keyed almost exclusively to securing victory over George McGovern and the Democrats. Fulbright, for his part, saw the election and McGovern's candidacy as a means to hasten the end of the war in Vietnam. Privately he was quite candid about the South Dakotan's chances for winning, but he believed that the nomination of a peace candidate would push Nixon toward an early and decisive end to the war.

Ironically, given his conservatism and his aversion to radical politics, it was Fulbright more than any other figure who molded and articulated the foreign policy program of the new Democratic Party. In the late summer of 1972 Random House published The Crippled Giant. Convinced that there was an extensive market for a sequel to The Arrogance of Power, the huge publishing house had approached Fulbright in 1971. After some deliberation, the chairman agreed to pen another critique of American foreign policy and society, and over the next year, Seth Tillman put together a manuscript based on material he had prepared for Fulbright going back to 1967. Included in the synthesis were the New Yorker and Progressive articles, speeches at Yale and Dennison universities, and various statements Fulbright had made on the floor of the Senate.

Although the book was not a commercial success, it was widely read by the new leadership in the Democratic Party and did much to define their views on foreign policy.